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Table of contents :
Preface
References
Acknowledgments
Praise for Rural Latin America in Transition
Contents
About the Author
Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
Methodology and Approach
Part I: Working in Latin America and the Paradoxes of Developmentalism (Chapter 2)
Part II: Mexico from Revolution to a New Emerging Order (Chapters 3–6)
Part III: Economics and Politics in Venezuela (Chapters 7–9)
Conclusion: A Revitalization of the Peasantry and Its New Role in an Agroecological Revolution
References
Part I Developmentalism
2 Working in Latin America: The Paradoxes of Developmentalism
The Invention of Developmentalism
Working in Latin America
The Importance of Social and Cultural Context
The Importance of Cultural Ecology and History
Looking at the Inside: The Peasantry
Latin America: Prerevolutionary Patterns and Revolutionary Forces of Change
Modernization and Change
The Alliance for Progress
Economic Policies and the CEPAL Approach
References
3 The Agroecological Revolution
The Revival of the Peasantry
Food, Peasants, and Agroecology in Latin America
The New Agroecological Revolution in Latin America
Food Crises in the Twenty-First Century
Revival of Ancient Forgotten Foods?
Traditional Peasant Agriculture: The Basis of a New Agroecological Approach
Social and Economic Change: Transition from Traditional Subsistence Agriculture to Semicommercial and Commercial Farming
Peasant Agriculture and Climate Change
The Campesino a Campesino Movement
The Return of the Peasants
References
Part II Mexico
4 Southern Mexico: Revolution, Agrarian Reform, and Rural Development
The Mexican Revolution
Background to Change
The Revolution Unfolding
The Revolution and Development
Agrarian Reform
Reform and the Peasantry
The Legacy of Revolution: The Emergence of a Modern Capitalist State
Population Explosion
Agricultural Decline and the Neoliberal “Solution”
Agricultural Decline and the Ejido Sector
References
5 Mexico in the New Emerging World Order
The New Maize Doctrine and the Peasantry
The Other Mexico: The Case of Chiapas
Structures and Systems of Repression and Impoverishment
Chiapas in 2010
Oligarchic One-Party Rule
References
6 Recent Developments in Mexico: Can Mexico Remake Itself?
A New Populist of the Pueblos
Rapid Urbanization
Mexico Is a Complex Country Shaping Its Own Future
Misallocation and Poor Productivity in Mexican Industries
References
Part III Venezuela
7 Economic Backwardness in the Venezuelan Andes
Introduction: The Dual Economy
Andean Society and Economy
Calderas-Altamira: Failure of the Institutional Framework
Upper Cojedes Basin: Land-Tenure Anomalies and Agricultural Regression
La Quebrada: “Minifundio Mentality” and Rural Stagnation
References
8 The Situation in the Llanos
The Maracaibo Lowlands: Migration as a Solution
Agriculture in the Lowlands
The Advantages of Living in the Tierra Caliente
La Estrellita: The “Takeoff” into Economic Growth
The Way Forward
Theoretical Implications
Policy Implications
The Minifundio Mentality: A Form of the Culture of Poverty
Capitalism: A Partially Effective Solution
Social Change and Economic Development
Economic Planning
References
9 Venezuela Revisited: 1979 and 2010—Betancourt
Urbanization Since the 1960s
Political Development: The Role of Rómulo Betancourt1
Agriculture and “Agrarian Reform” in the Llanos
Later Political Developments
The Evolution of the Petro-State and Its Consequences
La Apertura
References
10 The Economic Crisis and the Chávez Presidency
Venezuelan Revolution and the Chávez Legacy
Macroeconomic Management and Attempting a Transition to Socialism
Charisma in Decline: Dictatorship and Intimidation
Chávez: Death and Legacy
Rapid Urbanization and the Decline of the Peasantry
Two Remarkable Leaders
References
11 Venezuela: Chaos and Decline
The Ellner Thesis
The López Maya Thesis
The Political Context: The Emergence of Chavista Populism
Socialism of the Twenty-First Century: The Emergence of the Communal State
The Economic Model: Rentier Socialism
The Socioeconomic Situation
The Fight Against Corruption
A Country Falling Apart
US Sanctions Venezuela’s Vice President
Venezuela Faces Opposition Activists and Student Prisoners
A Plea for Peace and Reason
References
12 Maduro Makes a Mockery of Democracy in Venezuela
Opponents of Maduro Continue Protests: Growing Anger Among the Poor and Urban Ex-Peasants
Venezuela “Air Attack”
Maduro Government Jails Two Opposition Leaders
Opposition Leader Released from Jail by Maduro
Venezuelans Fleeing Their Country as It Collapses
Is Venezuela About to Plunge into Civil War?
Intervention of US Vice President Mike Pence
The Economy: Cash Is Vanishing in Venezuela
The Health Crisis: “Blood on the Black Market”
Venezuelan Crisis Unfolding
The Lima Group
Sanctions Tighten on Maduro
The Collapse of Venezuela
Maduro’s Authoritarianism in Charge
References
13 Epilogue
A Reflection on Peasants of Chiapas, Mexico, in 2010
The Insecure Situation of the Middle Peasantry
Democracy and Development
United Nations Censures Maduro and His Government for Crimes Against Humanity
References
Glossary: Mexico and Venezuela
Index

Citation preview

GOVERNANCE, DEVELOPMENT, AND SOCIAL INCLUSION IN LATIN AMERICA

Deeveloppment and Change in Mexico and Venezuela

Raay Watters

Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America

Series Editors Rebecka Villanueva Ulfgard International Studies Instituto Mora Mexico City, Mexico César Villanueva Rivas Department of International Studies Universidad Iberoamericana Mexico City, Mexico

This series seeks to go beyond a traditional focus on the virtues of intraregional and inter-regional trade agreements, liberal economic policies, and a narrow security agenda in Latin America. Instead, titles deal with a broad range of topics related to international cooperation, global and regional governance, sustainable development and environmental cooperation, internal displacement, and social inclusion in the context of the Post-2015 Development Agenda—as well as their repercussions for public policy across the region. Moreover, the series principally focuses on new international cooperation dynamics such as South-South and triangular cooperation, knowledge sharing as a current practice, and the role of the private sector in financing international cooperation and development in Latin America. The series also includes topics that fall outside the traditional scope of studying cooperation and development, in this case, (in)security and forced internal displacement, cultural cooperation, and Buen Vivir among indigenous peoples and farmers in Latin America. Finally, this series welcomes titles which explore the tensions and dialogue around how to manage the imbalance between state, markets, and society with a view to re-articulating cooperation and governance dynamics in the 21st century.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15135

Ray Watters

Rural Latin America in Transition Development and Change in Mexico and Venezuela

Ray Watters Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand

Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America ISBN 978-3-030-65032-2 ISBN 978-3-030-65033-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65033-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Architectura/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Dedication—Mexico and Venezuela Dedicated to the millions of peasants of Latin America who eke out only marginal livelihoods from small plots in the high sierra or baking tropical lowlands, suffering from the exploitation or dominance of the middle or richer classes, the unpredictable hazards of nature, climate change, or the indifference of a distant uncaring, or incompetent state.

Preface

It may come as a surprise that a book on Latin America is written by a New Zealander, someone who comes from a small country of only 5 million people situated at the “bottom of the South Pacific.” My interest in people, the land, and their struggles began at a young age, growing up in the provincial town of Napier. The town was almost totally destroyed by the deadly earthquake of 1931. The population rebuilt not only the town but also their lives, all while recovering from the Great Depression. We lived beside the Tutaekuri River. The uplift from the earthquake meant the river gradually ran dry. The tall raupo bulrushes next to the riverbed were our playground, an area of adventure and mystery we called “the Amazon jungle.” Little did I realize that nearly 30 years later, I would actually work in the real Amazon jungle. I first studied geography in New Zealand at Victoria and Auckland Universities, and in my last year I experienced fieldwork for the first time. Students were sent to visit a sample of farms flanking Lake Rotorua and I was introduced to ethnographic techniques and social science methodologies, such as interviewing, the use of questionnaires, and the use of hypotheses. I discovered that M¯aori land was regarded as synonymous with idle, uncultivated land in the hidebound primary-production consciousness of New Zealand’s agrarianism. From this experience, my interest was aroused not only in fieldwork but also in sociocultural factors affecting land use.

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PREFACE

While studying at the London School of Economics in the 1950’s, I was immersed in a large-scale urban–industrial society with a heavily Eurocentric world view. It was an interesting and humbling experience. The distant South Pacific including New Zealand never entered people’s ken, let alone appeared in the news. One day we heard on the BBC that the French had suffered a massive defeat in what was then called French Indo-China at Dien Bien Phu by a nationalist Vietnamese army. The French would shortly be pulling out of the country and ceding independence to the Vietnamese. The enormity of the news slowly sank in: a major European power had been decisively defeated by a little-known insurgent force. The established order of things was being fundamentally challenged: Western empires were on the retreat, and the shape of a new world order was beginning to emerge that was very different from the perspectives of London, Paris, Washington, or even Wellington. On my return to New Zealand, I joined the new Geography Department at the Wellington School of Geography teaching historical geography and the South Pacific. One team member of note was Professor Keith Buchanan, who I have in previous works referred to as a “radical geographer, a socialist, a champion of the dispossessed, and an unrelenting critic of orthodoxy, capitalist regimes, and power elites” (Watters 1998). His approach to geography was primarily cultural, following the brilliant Belgian geographer Pierre Gourou. The Belgian ambassador in Wellington gave me a number of Gourou’s reports on agriculture and forestry in the tropics, including his “Notes on China’s unused uplands,” where Gourou said: The links between the physical and human elements in any environment come about through the medium of civilization, that distorting prism which, in accordance with the laws peculiar to each civilization, transmits the influence of the physical environment to the human elements of a landscape. If the nature of the prism is changed, if a people’s civilization undergoes a transformation (such as the Maoist revolution in China from 1949–76), then the character of the relationship between a society and its physical environment is changed too; the significance of the various elements in the environment may undergo a profound alteration. (Gourou 1948)

In 1960, I had begun fieldwork in four different ecological zones in Fiji and learned about this agricultural system under differing local conditions.

PREFACE

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This work led to my paper “The nature of shifting cultivation” in the opening issue of Pacific Viewpoint in 1960 (Watters 1960). The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) had already initiated studies of shifting agriculture in Africa by Tondeur and BergerooCampagne and in Asia by Conklin. After my paper was published, the FAO invited me to undertake a similar study in the Central and South American tropics, and in 1963 and 1964, accompanied by my wife and two small daughters, I undertook fieldwork among agrarian societies in Latin America. This is how a young New Zealand geographer got involved in studying four countries and regions of Latin America over a period of 60 years. I learnt to take a contextual approach to a country and its regions and remain aware that geography as it is taught and studied today must by necessity contain a strong anthropological, sociological, and economic component, as well as its traditional environmental and physical perspectives. It must link not only crops and climate but also economic development with social change and political advancement. A number of experiences over the years have influenced my thinking, research methods, and writings that led to my work in Latin America and this book on Mexico and Venezuela. This work updates my previous publications on Latin America and focuses on the plight of rural peasants. It identifies some of the major problems and issues affecting them, always with an eye on the local, the specific, the lived experience, with a constant glance over the shoulder at changes in political ideologies about development and modernization in a global context. It tells their stories about huge social and demographic upheavals. It throws light on “development” and its associated pros and cons. It places the lives of small communities in clear juxtaposition with national and international forces for change, and it urges that good sense, empathy, and respect be exercised as communities of all sizes and political complexions attempt to deal with forces of globalization and climate change. Wellington, New Zealand

Dr. Ray Watters

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PREFACE

References Gourou P. Notes on China’s unused uplands. Pacific Affairs. 1948;21(3):227– 238. Watters RF. The nature of shifting cultivation. Pacific Viewpoint. 1960;1(1):59– 99. Watters R. The geographer as radical humanist: An appreciation of Keith Buchanan. Asia Pacific Viewpoint. 1998;39(1):1–28.

Acknowledgments

In this book, certain specialists on the region of Central America have influenced my thinking: the anthropologists of the Julian Steward (University of Illinois) school of cultural ecology and cultural change, including the role of major institutions such as the capitalistic plantation or traditional hacienda in molding society. Eric Wolf became a major scholar on the Latin American peasantry, as well as peasantry as a culture, class, and economy, as did Oscar Lewis with his groundbreaking books on Mexican peasants living in cities and his explorations of the culture of poverty. On the problem of underdevelopment and poverty internationally, I am especially indebted to Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, both Nobel Prize–winning economists, and also to the American economists Albert O Hirschman, for his work on development economics, and Susan George, for her vision and expertise in analyzing the debt crisis. As a researcher, my biggest debt of all, however, is to the Berkeley School of Geography, founded by Carl Sauer in San Francisco. The New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Victoria University of Wellington assisted later fieldwork on peasant studies in pasture improvement and rural development. The Inter-American Institute of Agricultural Sciences at Turrialba, Costa Rica, which I visited for several weeks, was an impressive center of innovative work on ecological research on the humid tropics in Latin America. I am indebted to Gerado Budowski, LR Holdridge, and JR Hunter, leaders in these areas.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Bethlyn Watters, my late wife, who took the photos for this publication, along with myself. Over many years, my family have had to cope with my lengthy preoccupation with and pursuit of this demanding subject. I also thank my partner Helen Stokes for her support and forbearance. Several people have assisted with the preparation of the manuscript. Ann Carroll dealt with my lengthy, messy writing with efficiency and unfailing cheerfulness, and thanks go to the late Ginny Sullivan, for her editorial advice. I also thank Juliet Oliver for some typing and editing. Over the last few years, I’ve been indebted to my friend Michael Stuart for his advice and online research skills, and also Celia Burton and Penny Mudford, who have assisted ably with the preparation of the manuscript. Cartography and diagrams were designed and produced by Barry Bradley, Cartographic Art Company. Editorial support was given by Christopher Walsh, with other support from Shannon Bentley, Jane Hopkirk, and Mike Tololi, getting the manuscript files ready for publication. The greatest debt of all is owed to the many peasant rural people, urban squatters, and migrants that I met and conversed with about their lives and livelihood.

Praise for Rural Latin America in Transition

“Ray Watters is a geographer and one of the founders of the Wellington School of Geography. In this school, along with figures such as Keith Buchanan, Terry McGee and Harvey Franklin, he established a programme of internationally recognised research and publication. It spanned work in Latin America, the Pacific Islands, Asia and New Zealand, and involved the establishment of the journal Pacific Viewpoint (now Asia Pacific Viewpoint ), which Ray edited for some 20 years. Those of us who work in that school now recognise and seek to extend that legacy. We also marvel at the way Ray Watters has continued his research and writing well into his retirement. His engagement with research in Latin America began in 1963 following his wider interest in shifting cultivation and an invitation from the FAO to conduct a study in central and South America. This led to field research in Peru, Venezuela and Mexico in particular and a series of publications through the FAO. Early interests in agricultural systems shifted to wider concerns for the structural conditions that conditioned the lives of rural people and inhibited their progress. Subsequently he has returned to the region, notably to Peru in 1990. His book Poverty and Peasantry in Peru’s Southern Andes 1963-90 published in 1994 recorded his analysis of changes over a more than twenty-five year period. Since then, Ray has maintained a remarkable record of research and publication through to the present. A collection of essays in 2008 entitled Journeys Towards Progress revisited his work throughout the Pacific Islands region

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PRAISE FOR RURAL LATIN AMERICA IN TRANSITION

and he has also maintained a strong interest in Latin America, including research there. This present book is important to scholars of the region. Firstly, Ray’s long interest in the historical foundations of the peasantry and in the dynamics of rural social and economic transformations is manifested in this chronicle of an individual’s field research over a period of some 50 years: a very rare insight into the way a researcher has been able to revisit research sites over many decades and reflect on both change and statis. We can also see how a researcher has evolved in his thinking and analytical frameworks over that time. Secondly, we can see in these chapters the critical ‘gaze’ of the outsider. Ray Watters has brought to his Latin American work a deep knowledge of other places - of the Pacific Islands and of China – and a solid grounding in global literature since the 1960s. This has allowed him to ask different questions, to frame issues in global perspectives, and to suggest some novel insights and interpretations. This can sit alongside the significant growth in critical scholarship from within the institutions and countries of Latin America over this period. Together from these we are developing a rich and evolving understanding of the complex processes and challenges that face the region and its people.” —John Overton, Wellington Director Development Studies School of Geography, Environmental and Earth Science Victoria University of Wellington, PHD Cambridge University, Fulbright Scholar, Distinguished New Zealand Geographer Award, Senior Professor [email protected]

Contents

1

Introduction Methodology and Approach Part I: Working in Latin America and the Paradoxes of Developmentalism (Chapter 2) Part II: Mexico from Revolution to a New Emerging Order (Chapters 3–6) Part III: Economics and Politics in Venezuela (Chapters 7–9) Conclusion: A Revitalization of the Peasantry and Its New Role in an Agroecological Revolution References

1 2 3 4 5 6 8

Part I Developmentalism 2

Working in Latin America: The Paradoxes of Developmentalism The Invention of Developmentalism Working in Latin America The Importance of Social and Cultural Context The Importance of Cultural Ecology and History Looking at the Inside: The Peasantry

11 12 16 16 19 22

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CONTENTS

Latin America: Prerevolutionary Patterns and Revolutionary Forces of Change Modernization and Change The Alliance for Progress Economic Policies and the CEPAL Approach References 3

The Agroecological Revolution The Revival of the Peasantry Food, Peasants, and Agroecology in Latin America The New Agroecological Revolution in Latin America Food Crises in the Twenty-First Century Revival of Ancient Forgotten Foods? Traditional Peasant Agriculture: The Basis of a New Agroecological Approach Social and Economic Change: Transition from Traditional Subsistence Agriculture to Semicommercial and Commercial Farming Peasant Agriculture and Climate Change The Campesino a Campesino Movement The Return of the Peasants References

Part II 4

23 26 27 29 32 35 35 37 38 40 42 43

46 49 49 53 54

Mexico

Southern Mexico: Revolution, Agrarian Reform, and Rural Development The Mexican Revolution Agrarian Reform Reform and the Peasantry The Legacy of Revolution: The Emergence of a Modern Capitalist State Population Explosion Agricultural Decline and the Neoliberal “Solution” Agricultural Decline and the Ejido Sector References

59 62 69 74 76 77 77 80 85

CONTENTS

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5

Mexico in the New Emerging World Order The New Maize Doctrine and the Peasantry The Other Mexico: The Case of Chiapas Structures and Systems of Repression and Impoverishment Chiapas in 2010 Oligarchic One-Party Rule References

87 87 94 101 108 114 117

6

Recent Developments in Mexico: Can Mexico Remake Itself? A New Populist of the Pueblos Rapid Urbanization Mexico Is a Complex Country Shaping Its Own Future Misallocation and Poor Productivity in Mexican Industries References

119 121 124 125 130 143

Part III 7

8

Venezuela

Economic Backwardness in the Venezuelan Andes Introduction: The Dual Economy Andean Society and Economy Calderas-Altamira: Failure of the Institutional Framework Upper Cojedes Basin: Land-Tenure Anomalies and Agricultural Regression La Quebrada: “Minifundio Mentality” and Rural Stagnation References

147 147 152 158

The Situation in the Llanos The Maracaibo Lowlands: Migration as a Solution Agriculture in the Lowlands The Advantages of Living in the Tierra Caliente The Way Forward The Minifundio Mentality: A Form of the Culture of Poverty References

177 177 179 181 186

161 165 174

190 198

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CONTENTS

9

Venezuela Revisited: 1979 and 2010—Betancourt Urbanization Since the 1960s Political Development: The Role of Rómulo Betancourt Agriculture and “Agrarian Reform” in the Llanos Later Political Developments The Evolution of the Petro-State and Its Consequences La Apertura References

201 204 205 208 214 216 218 221

10

The Economic Crisis and the Chávez Presidency Venezuelan Revolution and the Chávez Legacy Macroeconomic Management and Attempting a Transition to Socialism Charisma in Decline: Dictatorship and Intimidation Chávez: Death and Legacy Rapid Urbanization and the Decline of the Peasantry Two Remarkable Leaders References

223 226

Venezuela: Chaos and Decline The Ellner Thesis The López Maya Thesis The Political Context: The Emergence of Chavista Populism Socialism of the Twenty-First Century: The Emergence of the Communal State The Economic Model: Rentier Socialism The Socioeconomic Situation The Fight Against Corruption A Country Falling Apart US Sanctions Venezuela’s Vice President Venezuela Faces Opposition Activists and Student Prisoners A Plea for Peace and Reason References

253 253 257 258

Maduro Makes a Mockery of Democracy in Venezuela Opponents of Maduro Continue Protests: Growing Anger Among the Poor and Urban Ex-Peasants Venezuela “Air Attack”

277

11

12

235 240 243 245 247 250

259 260 263 268 270 272 272 273 275

277 279

CONTENTS

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Maduro Government Jails Two Opposition Leaders Opposition Leader Released from Jail by Maduro Venezuelans Fleeing Their Country as It Collapses Is Venezuela About to Plunge into Civil War? Intervention of US Vice President Mike Pence The Economy: Cash Is Vanishing in Venezuela The Health Crisis: “Blood on the Black Market” Venezuelan Crisis Unfolding The Lima Group Sanctions Tighten on Maduro The Collapse of Venezuela Maduro’s Authoritarianism in Charge References

280 281 282 282 286 287 289 291 293 295 297 299 302

Epilogue A Reflection on Peasants of Chiapas, Mexico, in 2010 The Insecure Situation of the Middle Peasantry Democracy and Development United Nations Censures Maduro and His Government for Crimes Against Humanity References

305 305 308 308 310 311

Glossary: Mexico and Venezuela

313

Index

317

About the Author

Ray Watters is a New Zealand geographer/anthropologist with special interests in Latin America and the South Pacific. He is known internationally for his work in rural development and social change in the developing world. After graduating from both Victoria University and Auckland University, he completed a Ph.D. in Historical Geography at the London School of Economics. He undertook a study on shifting agriculture for the Food and Agriculture Organization in Venezuela, Mexico, and Peru. He has led a number of projects for the United Nations and various governments of developing countries working in Samoa, Fiji, the Solomons, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Papua New Guinea, and Guizhou, southwest China. Many of his studies involved geographic, historical, anthropological, and economic analyses, as well as village fieldwork on peasantry. Research projects he led resulted in ten major reports and his students attaining six PhDs.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ray taught historical geography, the Pacific, and Chinese peasantry at Victoria University, Wellington over a period of 38 years, with 25 of those years teaching a course on Latin America. His published works include now ten books and 41 research papers, including: Land and Society in New Zealand: Essays in Historical Geography, Koro: Economic Development and Social Change in Fiji, Shifting Cultivation in Latin America, Poverty and Peasantry in Peru’s Southern Andes, 1963–90, [with WH Geddes, A Chambers, B Sewell, R Lawrence] Atoll Economy: Social Change in Kiribati and Tuvalu, [with IG Bertram] New Zealand and Its Small island Neighbours. A Report of NZ Policy Toward the Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau, Kiribati and Tuvalu, [with TG McGee] Asia– Pacific: New Geographies of the Pacific Rim, Journeys Towards Progress: Essays of a Geographer on Development and Change in Oceania.

Abbreviations

AD Bs CBOs CELAC CEPAL

CITES CNC COPEI CROM ECAFE ECE ECLA EZLN FAO FARC GASUR GATT IMF NAFTA OAS OECD

Acción Democratica (political party, Venezuela) Bolivar (Venezuelan currency) Community-Based Organizations Community of Latin America and Caribbean States Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean); see also ECLA Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora Confederation of Campesinos Christian Democratic Party (Venezuela) Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana Economic Commission for Asia and Far East (UN) Economic Commission of Europe (UN) Economic Commission for Latin America (UN); see also CEPAL Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) Food and Agriculture Organization (UN) Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) Gran Gasoducto del Sur (gas pipeline, Venezuela) General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade International Monetary Fund North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement Organization of American States Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development xxiii

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ABBREVIATIONS

PAN PDVSA PRI PROCAMPO PRONASOL REDD SALB SAM USMCA WTO ZOIs

Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party, Mexico) Petróleos de Venezuela (state oil company) Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party, Mexico) Programa de Apoyos Directos al Campo (program of direct subsidies to farmers, 1993, Mexico) Programa Nacional de Solidaridad (social program instituted in 1993, Mexico) Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (US) South American leaf blight Sistema Alimentario Mexicano (Mexican Food System) United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (free-trade agreement) World Trade Organization Zones of Influence (Venezuela)

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

5.3 5.4 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4

Photo 4.1 Photo 4.2 Photo 4.3 Photo 5.1 Photo 5.2 Photo 5.3

Mexico map Map of southern Mexico Maize production and consumption: rain-fed and irrigated, 1970–2012 Maize harvested area, total: rain-fed and irrigated, 1970–2012 Map of Chiapas state Repeated map of Chiapas state Map of Venezuela Venezuelan Andes: relief map Venezuelan Andes: settlement Venezuelan Andes: cross-section from Lake Maracaibo to Barinitas, showing altitudinal zones and land use A Highland Maya family of Tsotsil language visiting their local market An Indian peasant with his donkeys and mule pass a Roman Catholic church A family scene in the market, San Juan, Chamula, Chiapas state Three peasants bring their produce to market on a very hot day in a rapidly desiccating area, Oaxaca Peasant women offering their crops for sale, Etla market Villagers leave their donkeys or mules in this yard close to the nearby market, Oaxaca state

60 63 94 95 97 109 149 152 153 157

73 75 83 88 91 95

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LIST OF FIGURES

Photo 6.1

Photo 6.2

Photo 6.3 Photo 7.1 Photo 7.2 Photo 8.1 Photo 8.2 Photo 9.1 Photo 9.2 Photo 9.3 Photo 10.1 Photo 10.2 Photo 11.1 Photo 11.2 Photo 12.1 Photo 12.2 Photo 12.3

Holy week of Easter at San Juan, Chamula. Villagers have hung a dummy in front of the door, reflecting Christ’s crucifixion, Chiapas state An elderly man shows his shock and despair at the reenactment of Christ’s death and sacrifice, Chiapas state Peasants carry loads of firewood for sale as charcoal. Mestizo citizens in background, Oaxaca state The two Venezuela’s: Caracas with modern skyscrapers, and a crowded shanty town The rather bleak, cooler, and stormy region of the Andean Paramo At the base of the Andes the rainforest has been cleared to build a new settlement (Mosquito Canyon) Plantains grow next to a new house of a migrant family, Zulia State A peasant boy and his donkey passes the image of President Betancourt A fly blown butcher’s shop in the hot tropical heat, East Andes A small peasant house A typical small town in the Venezuelan Andes with a cobbled street A small peasant holding in the Venezuelan Andes; the main crops are plantains and coffee Small agricultural plots (minifundia) in the Andes on very steep land A very poor dilapidated peasant house A small, dilapidated wayside store, advertising the local beer On the outskirts of Caracas squatters build their “slums of hope” Squatter settlers even invade areas under bridges to build homes of their own

127

128 143 148 154 179 187 206 209 213 237 248 261 274 278 289 301

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table 5.1 Table 6.1 Table 6.2

Some major differences between industrial and agroecology-based peasant-food systems Maize production in Mexico, 1970–2012 Changes in composition of nonagricultural workforce between 2000 and 2013 Productivity gains, 1998–2018

44 93 133 134

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The overall focus of this book is on the livelihoods and transitions to modernity of peasantries of Venezuela and Mexico, based primarily on fieldwork that I carried out between 1963 and 2010. It covers the postpeasant cholo class and its counterparts in other countries, and to a lesser extent the urban squatters who have settled in the shantytowns, usually on the outskirts of the booming arrival cities. I sought to understand the major land-use systems in Mexico and Venezuela, and I undertook detailed fieldwork within representative regions to study characteristic village communities in a range of differing ecosystems. It was important to understand key structures in the whole complex: the minifundio system, land tenure, how labor was mobilized, the nature of the technology, the factors that sustained the hacienda–colono or comunero relationship, the basic principles on which the survival of the comunidad depended, ensuring its continuance, the terms of trade between peasant communities and external markets, and the like. In the following chapters, I describe and analyze peasant communities, various aspects of peasant life, economy, and society and their relationship to more powerful outsiders and institutions, and peasant outcomes involving transition processes in migration, social mobility, urbanization, and participation in urban or more cosmopolitan areas of life. Two countries are considered as case studies: Mexico and Venezuela, looking at © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Watters, Rural Latin America in Transition, Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65033-9_1

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the period from the Cold War to the twenty-first century. I have avoided where I can compare them as these two countries are distinctive in their own rights.

Methodology and Approach In my fieldwork, I began as a geographer examining the usual factors or topics involved in people’s interaction with their local environment, as well as with more powerful outsiders, haciendas, townspeople, merchants, and agencies of local and national government. In studying the peasantry, I was aware that most peasant groups had historically been part of an empire in which the state and its dominant classes had ruled over the peasantry, determining the latter’s underdog position. Habitually, in sample villages, I would select a stratified random sample of households (the key social and economic unit in peasant society), carry out a simple census of the population—age structure and sex (labor: consumer ratios)—and identify the major land types, tenure systems, and areas of each type worked by the household. I had a particular interest in the Central Sierra of Mexico, where large populations of predominantly Indian peasants competed with mestizo landowners who possessed haciendas. In addition to the physical environmental contrasts between the highlands and the lowlands (slope, rock and soil types, climate, vegetation), the ethnic, cultural, and social differences were great, and from both flowed the great economic divide, leaving on the landscape in more marginal highland areas the indelible patterns of poverty and inequality following colonial conquest, domination, and various forms of exploitation and debt servitude. As the peasants struggled at times to survive, the primary goal of the peasant household (the main social unit) was to subsist: production for sale occurred only when a surplus of crops or livestock was produced. From my research findings and in reviewing the literature on peasantry, I have identified five conceptual approaches to the study of the peasantry. They are: • • • •

the ethnographic cultural tradition, the Durkheimian tradition, often allied to functional sociology, the “specific economy” approach, the Marxist tradition of class analysis and the dependence approach, and

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• the ethnohistorical approach (Watters 1994, p 11). These approaches are reflected throughout this book and I found that census and other statistical data at the meso (or district) level usually indicated variations in agricultural output and rate of population growth or out-migration, and at the municipio level, information could sometimes be found about regional problems and planning, law and order, capital works, or infrastructure change (such as road improvements, new schools or health clinics, electricity and irrigation, and recent installation of drainage or water-resource schemes and more modern sewerage systems). There was also Latin American literature that was relevant on the economy, social and economic development, social classes, and political systems of these countries and major regions within them such as Octavio Paz, Oscar Lewis, Eric Wolf, David Barkin, RÒmulo Gallegos powerful novel—Doña Bárbara, and others. I also used a wide range of online media sources, since they record new events, the changing situation, or new policies, as such happenings may reveal new processes of change at work in the country or rural area. I mostly consulted the Economist of London and Guardian Weekly, these being two high-quality publications representing the center-right and center-left points of view, and these two publications together often balanced out the interpretation of the local scene. I also consulted other well-known papers, such as the Times, Washington Post, New York Times, Le Monde, Telegraph, and Wall St Journal. The book is written in three parts, leading with the paradoxes of developmentalism (Part I). The chapters in Part II of the book cover developments in Mexico from the time of the Zapata revolution through to recent developments under the rule of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Part III focuses on Venezuela, including factors leading to urbanization, rural stagnation, and economic decline.

Part I: Working in Latin America and the Paradoxes of Developmentalism (Chapter 2) Chapter 2 explores the paradoxes of developmentalism. The United Nations established in international architecture meant to develop and assist poor countries, e.g., the International Bank for Reconstruction and

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Development (World Bank) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In 1949, US President Harry S Truman presented a speech that launched the new age of developmentalism, where the work was reconceptualized, rationalized, standardized, and stereotyped to enable bureaucrats to simplify development and apply normative rules of the game to Third World problems. He advocated that American business, private capital, agriculture, and labor work together with other rich nations to raise the industrial activity, economic development, and standards of living in underdeveloped countries. The economic growth that took place in Latin America was mostly led by foreign firms and entrepreneurs, and confined to the likes of mining, processing, and plantations. No widespread economic development and modernization occurred, and the peasantry continued to live mainly in small villages. They were illiterate, impoverished, and marginalized from urban life. In 1961, President John F Kennedy created the new Alliance for Progress aid scheme involving the commitment of significant funds to Latin American countries. Despite the support of this foreign aid, there were problems implementing the programs, because of slowness, poor planning, and declining markets for Latin American products.

Part II: Mexico from Revolution to a New Emerging Order (Chapters 3–6) The Mexican Revolution of 1910, led by Emiliano Zapata, stuttered on for decades. In sum, 1.5–2 million people died in the bloodshed, but it achieved many great reforms and advances. About 11,000 large latifundios (landed estates) and haciendas were dismantled over four decades, land was distributed to ejidos (communal land) in many small communities, and by the 1930s, the revolution had been “institutionalized” by the formation of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). However, the middle classes were the main beneficiaries and the counterreform of 1992 by President Carlos de Gortari ended the ejido system and promoted the sale and renting of the land to private capital and agribusiness, the signing of the NAFTA treaty in 1994 and Mexico’s entry into the OECD, and the Global Agreement with the EU. The Tlatelolco massacre of 1968 signaled the death of the revolution. The country was experiencing a profound crisis, and Mexico had become a single-party state run by an oligarchy. Between 2000 and 2011, Chinese wages rose, enabling Mexico to undercut Chinese exports to the

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US, and by 2007, Mexico was the 14th-largest economy in the world. The economy grew quickly, and Mexico became a significant exporter of appliances, electronic components, cars, and manufactured goods. It opened its doors to globalization, eliminated tariffs, and embraced free trade agreements with other countries. The rural sector in Mexico had operated mainly under the production system of peasantry, a system that could be thought of as outmoded and outdated when compared with Western forms of agricultural production. Industrial agriculture has for some decades put pressure on ecosystems, the very systems they are dependent on, e.g., for pollination and soil fertility. With a new agroecological revolution emerging in Latin America, the farming systems adopted by peasantry are well suited to an agroecology-based agricultural system, and the revitalization of peasantry is a recognition of its new role in resisting the advance of industrial agriculture and neoliberal policies. Using the Campesino a Campesino (CAC) method, different hillside farmers adopted various techniques to triple and quadruple their yields. The techniques maintained and improved the land, helped build local capacity and boost food security, confidence, and self-belief, and provided crucial leadership experience. Peño Nieto of the PRI party led structural reforms from 2012, finally allowing private foreign investors back into the oil sector. When López Obrador became mayor of Mexico City TV, pundits called him “AMLO,” then on July 1, 2018, he earned another name—El Presidente—as the new leader of this nation of 130 million. Santiago Levy argues that the current tax system, social-insurance, and labor-protection policies are flawed, leading to misallocation, that this is the main reason productivity is low, and that a policy shift is necessary (Levy 2018).

Part III: Economics and Politics in Venezuela (Chapters 7–9) Venezuela is often called the richest undeveloped country in the world, though there are gross disparities in wealth throughout. The gap between the capitalist sector and the domestic sector has steadily widened, for with unguided market forces determining the allocation of resources, cumulative movements in income inequalities became entrenched. The economic crisis of 1958–1961 led to a substantial diversification of the economy from oil exporting and a curtailment of luxury expenditure; however, in the agricultural sector, little real change occurred.

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When I revisited Venezuela in 1979, I witnessed the fundamental change in society in which peasants had migrated to the cities, which led to amalgamation of minifundios and some degree of mechanization. The education-focused Rómulo Betancourt—a true democrat, president from 1945 to 1948, and politically active until 1981—refused to resort to the firing squad to deal with those who revolted against constitutional government. The revolutionary despot Hugo Chávez, like Betancourt, was hampered by unrealistic policies regarding agrarian reform, but adept at maintaining support in the shantytowns and building alliances with other Latin American countries to resist US imperialism. I visited again briefly in 2010, where I traveled through Caracas and part of the Venezuelan Andes. On this visit, I noted changes that were concerning. Many Andeans had abandoned their smallholdings and migrated to the cities, and the peasants (campesinos ) and shifting cultivators (conuqueros ) were located in isolated and marginal areas. In 2014, antigovernment protests took place calling for radicalization and “people power.” As there are no balances among state powers and all of them are subordinated to the executive, President Nicolás Maduro has already shown he will use special powers, such as setting up an illegal constitutional assembly formed to redraft the country’s constitution, which he said was necessary to restore peace and prevent a coup. As Venezuela now falls further into a humanitarian disaster of economic collapse and political repression, huge numbers of its citizens are fleeing to other countries to find havens in which they seek to build new lives. Luis Cedeño, director of a group that runs an organized-crime observatory, says that Venezuela has “gone beyond a narco-state”: it is a “mafia state” (Hernández and Brodzinsky 2017) in which other criminal economies, such as fuel smuggling and contraband in basic goods, have become entrenched, contributing greatly to the acute shortage of food and medicines and social unrest, such as rioting.

Conclusion: A Revitalization of the Peasantry and Its New Role in an Agroecological Revolution Rather than regarding the peasantry as an inferior, outdated society or economy, the author has over time noticed its revitalization and new role that it now plays in an agroecological revolution that resists the advance of industrial agriculture and neoliberal policies. Using the Campesino a

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Campesino (peasant to peasant) method, hillside farmers adopted the various techniques to triple or quadruple their yields. These techniques maintained and improved the land and helped build home security, boost food security, confidence, and self-belief, and provided crucial leadership experience. Each peasant village has its own community-based management committee (junta directiva), the president, secretary, treasurer, and others who are elected to fill useful roles. Often, communities hold a village meeting once a month to discuss any problems and difficulties and how they should be dealt with. These meetings are essentially democratic and assist community learning, although lowly peasants often lack the confidence to express their opinions, leaving middle-income and richer peasants to dominate. There are, however, practices that exist to help some of the poorest households. While most households own up to three small plots on different classes of land, the village management committee normally grants to the poorest households a little more land than average to plant their crop or so one or two extra sheep can be grazed. A very important factor is reciprocity among households, each helping the other in their time of need. Over time, national, regional, and local (municipio) governments have assisted the peasantry in many ways, for example, improving health (appointment of a nurse to each community), organizing visits of doctors from nearby towns, and improving schooling, roads, sanitation, and access to clean water. Today, even in areas where a number of peasant villages are located, there should be facilities for sport to be played during the dead agricultural season, such as football, netball, and baseball, leading to healthy rivalry among village teams. Although hardship and poverty still exist, the lot of the peasant has been considerably improved in recent times. More, of course, needs to be done. Modernizing ideologies and technocratic prejudices have unfortunately undermined peasantry in Mexico, Venezuela, and probably elsewhere. However, peasants’ unique vision and tenacity have enabled them to inject new vigor into rural society by diversifying their production strategies (Barkin 2002; Watters 1971). Social scientists have often underestimated their resilience and determination, and the strength of the ties that bind and their primordial loyalties in the village communities continue. It is important that local governments continue with leadership training of peasants at both the village community and household levels. Village

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communities cherish the importance of Saint’s Days, high days, and holidays, and processions that show the continuing strength of traditions (see Chapter 3).

References Barkin D. The reconstruction of a modern Mexican peasantry. Journal of Peasant Studies. 2002;30(1):73–90. Hernández A, Brodzinsky S. Venezuelan VP claims show there’s no separation of drugs and state. Guardian Weekly. 2017. Levy S. Under-Rewarded Efforts: The Elusive Quest for Prosperity in Mexico. Washington: Inter-American Development Bank; 2018. Watters RF. Poverty and Peasantry in Peru’s Southern Andes, 1963–90. London: Macmillan; 1994. Watters RF. Shifting Cultivation in Latin America. Rome: FAO; 1971.

PART I

Developmentalism

CHAPTER 2

Working in Latin America: The Paradoxes of Developmentalism

In the great sweep of the history of humankind, the assumptions, underpinning beliefs, and goals that drive people to achieve what they believe will be better lives during their time on earth can vary dramatically. In this book, the general trends of Western-oriented development in the twentieth century as they have been applied to Latin American countries are accepted, albeit subject to considerable criticism of their inequality, unfairness, and environmental destruction. However, striking evidence points to two quite different pasts: economies and societies that have functioned well in their contexts, and those that in response to environmental and other factors have been subject to broad and fundamental change. One was that of the early humans who found agreeable homes in the Amazon in the late Pleistocene Epoch, at least 13,000 years ago, when it was cooler and drier than it is today. By 2000 BC, Indians of the lower Amazon had a large population, made pottery, and grew at least 138 crops. The other was in the Inca period between 1150 and 1300 AD, when warmer temperatures enabled people to grow maize 250–300 meters higher on Andean slopes than they can now (Hemming 2009, pp 277–288). The brilliant cultures that existed in large parts of Amazonia were also at least partly sustained on human-improved terra preta soils in areas that today have poor, highly acidic soils producing only modest harvests under swidden cultivation. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Watters, Rural Latin America in Transition, Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65033-9_2

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The Invention of Developmentalism Fifty years after I began my fieldwork, it is useful and important to give an account of the ideas into which I was born and those that I became familiar with as I began my academic career, both as a fieldworker and as a cultural theorist. We young social scientists—anthropologists, geographers, and sociologists—emerged from countries that were ethnocentric and comparatively safe, despite the ravages of the Second World War. We were drawn, almost inevitably, to what was then called the Third World. What was the attraction? What were the nascent understandings about such concepts as developmentalism, the imperative of economic growth, the inevitability of globalization, and the intransigence of poverty, or at least inequality, that created the attitudes behind this intellectual exodus? In recent years, a number of important studies have shed light on developmentalism and its associated issues as they have been conceptualized since 1945. Such writers as Arturo Escobar (1995), Majid Rahnema (1992), James Scott (1998), and earlier Polanyi and MacIver (1957) have reminded us that the evolution of advanced capitalism in North America and Europe in the postwar years, allied with the rivalry for world hegemony of the two superpowers during the Cold War, were culturally specific processes that had an enormous impact on the world and how we thought of it. With the establishment of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, as well as the UN, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), institutional structures were set in place that were not only meant to develop and assist countries seeking economic progress but also to help create the mechanisms, ideologies, policies, and approaches that would shape thinking throughout the world. From 1945, rather than viewing development problems in a local context, the concept of “developmentalism“ began to emerge. Earlier, powerful forces of modernization were at work: the expansion of the market economy, the spread of education, and the introduction of political changes, such as the Western notion of democracy. The evolution of welfare-state thinking following the Great Depression of 1929–1934, including the New Deal in the US and the Beveridge Report in the UK, suggested a particular approach to alleviating poverty. Traditional societies had always dealt with the reality of poverty through their concepts

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of community, kinship, and frugality (my grandparents spoke of “making do” or “getting by” in hard times), but the spread of the market economy, stimulated by the optimism of the period, high commodity prices, and the hegemonic competition between the major capitalist powers and Soviet communism, led to an undermining of community and kinship mechanisms for dealing with poverty. Poverty as a “pauperizing myth” arrived after the Second World War. When hunger is defined in terms of an identifiable nutritional disease or a quantifiable lack of calories, poverty, squalor, and misery become objectified and measurable and may be analyzed causally. Annual per capita income of US$100 was chosen by the World Bank in 1948 as a tool to determine poverty, and people who lived below this income were defined as “poor.” It then became known that these “poor” comprised about two-thirds of the world’s population. The reason for this problem was seen to be insufficiency of income, and its solution clearly was to institute economic growth. When the other new concept, the “Third World,” appeared, in distinction to the capitalist “First World” and socialist “Second World,” its most essential characteristic was identified as poverty. Development was a counter to that: a slow elaboration of elements and ideas, the purpose of which was the eradication of poverty. The concept of welfarism also helped to create a great new domain of knowledge and a panoply of interventions that several researchers have termed “the social” (Escobar 1995). The transformation of the poor into “the assisted” reinforced the breakdown of vernacular relations and also helped set in place new mechanisms of control. The “poor” were now seen as a “social problem” that required new interventions in society. The consolidation of the welfare state and the ensemble of techniques in the twentieth century, under the heading of “social work” (that included identification of degrees of poverty, health, hygiene, employment, education, and the stress of living in towns and cities), constructed a vast new arena of approaches to human populations and concepts about social planning. The aim of the capitalist order was not only to create many new consumers and laborers to meet the needs of capitalism but also to turn the poor into objects of knowledge and management in the social domain. Polanyi and MacIver noted in 1957 that there was a close connection between poverty, political economy, and the revaluation of society. In relation to poverty, more modern ways of thinking about the meaning of life, the economy, human rights, and social management came into existence.

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In his inaugural address in 1949, as fears of communism were growing, US President Harry Truman announced a new plan of action. In point four of his speech, he heralded the “development age” when he said: [W]e must embark on a bold new program … for the improvement and growth of the underdeveloped areas … we should foster capital investment in areas needing development. … Greater production is the key to prosperity and peace. And the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge. (Harry S Truman Library and Museum 1949)

Truman advocated that American business, private capital, agriculture, and labor work together with other rich nations to raise industrial activity, economic development, and standards of living in “underdeveloped” countries. There was no place in this new age of development for the previous exploitative international relations under imperialism. Instead, the emphasis was to be on “democratic fair-dealing.” It has been argued by Gilbert Rist (1997), Arturo Escobar (1995), Sara Kindon (1999), and others that the language and ideas inherent in point four of Truman’s speech launched what is variously called the development age or the age of developmentalism. The world was reconceptualized such that previously colonized nations were to be incorporated through the development discourse to become members of a single family, helped or assisted by more developed or advanced nations. Colonialism was discredited and decolonization justified, and old colonial empires like those of the British and the Dutch were effectively dismantled, which enabled access to new emerging markets. Australia and New Zealand were expected to assist the small island groups of the South Pacific region, while the US would perform this role elsewhere in Oceania and for the countries in its own backyard of Central and South America. Developmentalism was presented as a set of measures that were neutral and outside the realm of politics, involving the application of scientific knowledge and technology, an increase in economic growth, and the expansion of trade. By launching the development age and the terms “developed” and “underdeveloped,” a new language was established with new definitions that fixed countries’ positions in the world order. A further influential step in creating and expanding the culture of developmentalism is illustrated by the first mission carried out by the World Bank when a delegation visited Colombia in 1949. A group of

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14 international advisers drew up a comprehensive and integrated general development program for Colombia in which they asserted that “a great deal can be done to improve the economic environment by shaping economic policies to meet scientifically ascertained social requirements” (Escobar 1995). If it made such an effort, Colombia would not only “accomplish its own salvation” but also “furnish an inspiring example to all other underdeveloped areas of the world” (Escobar 1995, p 413). Escobar notes that the World Bank mission wrote with a “messianic feeling” and “quasi-religious fervour” (Escobar 1995, p 26). The problem was that the group was concerned there was “only one right way,” namely development. Before development, there was nothing, only “reliance on natural forces,” and presumably a state of darkness (Escobar 1995, pp 44–46). The process of professionalizing and institutionalizing development brought the Third World into the politics of knowledge and Western science in general. This was achieved by a set of techniques, strategies, and disciplinary practices that organized, validated, proliferated, and dispersed development knowledge and methods of teaching and research, and through which certain forms of knowledge were given the status of truth. As such, certain problems were brought progressively into the field of development by bringing “problems to light in ways congruent with this established system of knowledge and power” (Escobar 1995, pp 44–46). The scene was thus well and truly set for the later initiation of the Alliance for Progress, the world’s greatest aid program in the Third World, and for the particular forms it took. The type of development promoted conformed to the ideas and expectations of the affluent West, to what Western countries deemed to be a normal course of evolution and progress. By conceptualizing progress in such terms, the development strategy became a powerful instrument for normalizing the world (Escobar 1995, pp 44–46). It was rationalized, standardized, generalized, stereotyped, and routinized to enable bureaucrats to simplify development and apply normative “rules of the game” to Third World problems. The precise nature and geographic and cultural distinctiveness of these Third World realities were glossed over and distorted. Further criticisms of these concepts include the invisibility of women and the gross underrepresentation of their major role in development, and the emphasis on scientific surveys and study of the resource base of countries that supposedly provided guidelines for rational planning and development (Rist

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1997; Escobar 1995; Kindon 1999). This was the intellectual and political climate in which I began my career as an academic and geographer in the field.

Working in Latin America My first research was conducted in the Pacific. I became familiar with microeconomics, the harsh reality of the hot, wet tropics, types of shifting cultivation (swidden), the importance of localism, forms of tribal and “post tribal“ societies, and the stirrings of developmentalism. While a number of fellow social scientists and I flirted with the notion of “peasants“ to describe the new “independent farmers” of Fiji who lived outside the “communal” villages, I realized that in British colonies, villagers, unlike peasants, were well shielded from market forces by colonial patterns of indirect rule. Moreover, in almost all the Pacific, there had been no form of money, no markets or marketplaces, and no towns or cities— these had arrived with Europeans 80 or 100 years earlier. Real peasants in other parts of the world, such as Latin America, had lived with and in relation to these, and to more powerful social classes, for centuries. Whether one’s approach as a geographer was “what places are like” or the interaction of culture and environment, I knew we had to start with a recognition of the social, economic, and political realities. I also believed one must study not only structures and systems but also change and process,1 for in Latin America, the future was rapidly becoming the present (Polanyi and MacIver 1957). There were several key factors in the dynamic geographic patterns I discovered that, starkly removed from the relative familiarity of Oceania, helped crystallize my approach and also took me into the heart of some of the startling characteristics of Latin American culture and society.

The Importance of Social and Cultural Context Early in my fieldwork, in the Venezuelan llanos (tropical grassland or savannah), I witnessed the demise of a simple mechanization cooperative. A number of small farmers who could not afford individually to buy a tractor had combined to buy one for the whole group, but the scheme soon collapsed, due to intense individualism manifested in malicious bickering and a refusal to cooperate or await one’s turn. I encountered many

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other similar instances of excessive individualism that led to the failure of other group projects. Although one must be careful not to be swayed by stereotypes, I remembered I had read that many of Spain’s own writers and philosophers, such as Madriaga, Santayana, and Unamuno, and others, such as Havelock Ellis, had emphasized that such behavior could lead to personalismo (intense individualism) in politics and even perhaps to the frequent emergence of the caudillo (populist and strongman leader) in national life or the cacique (boss) in the business world. Over the five decades I worked in Latin America, situations often existed in which many caudillos emerged, dominating national politics for a time and practicing demagogic or populist policies, rather than building solid parties that were responsible for an electoral base or trying to implement sound social, economic, and political reforms. When we consider the great heroes of Spain or Latin America, the names that are revered above all others are individual adventurers, such as El Cid, Christopher Columbus, Hernán Cortés, Alonso de Contreras, and Simón Bolívar. There are great individual painters, musicians, and philosophers, but their caudillo person or extreme individualism meant that it was very rare for any school of thought to survive for long. Ignacio de Loyola appears to be almost the only Spaniard ever to have founded a large and enduring band of followers—the Jesuits. The political consequence of this was that at times so many Latin Americans tended to be their own private political party. There were national elections while I was working in Venezuela and Mexico, and I was astonished to learn each time that there were about eight competing political parties. While there was the usual division between right and left, the other factor of differentiation was largely based on the individual personality of the leader. Almost every lamppost in every town or city was completely covered by the electioneering posters of all these parties, and since in 1963 many electors could not read, each party had a color or symbol so that it could be recognized. When combined with other Spanish qualities, such as fatalism, contempt for death, a sense of the tragedy and uncertainty of life, stoicism, worldly pragmatism, distrust of everyone and everything, and mysticism, as well as the dichotomies of the visionary and the earthy, the idealist and the realist, the impractical and the practical, we can see that the circumstances of history have shaped a very distinctive culture for this gaunt and steely Spanish race (Schurz 1954, p 81).

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The importance of male dominance, of machismo, is well known in the Latin American world, and when allied with qualities of personal pride (orgullo) and honor (honorado), it can easily lead to rivalries, arrogance, envy, or vanity. The extreme emphasis on the concept of honor means that rivalries are often ruthless and personal enmity can grow out of professional rivalry. Emotions are all in raw, primary colors. One either admires or hates, as the matador hates the bull. Nothing is lukewarm—there is no middle way. Such a value system and personalized social structure provide a code of honor and obsession with personal dignity that is a hard taskmaster. The legacy of feudalism is evident too in this respect: “One’s property and life belong to the king, but honor is patrimony of the soul, and soul is of God alone” (Schurz 1954, p 100). Coming as I did from the British tradition that emphasizes the middle way, compromise, collaboration in politics, the importance of organizations, and the usual presence of only two major stable parties (one more to the left of the other), I found Latin American life very different, indeed. When I began fieldwork near San Andrés Tuxtla in Veracruz state, I found that in one small township police records revealed there had been about 30 murders in the previous year (compared at that time to only six murders in the whole of New Zealand). In many, the murder weapon was a machete. Feudalism still casts a long shadow. The wholesale granting of patents of nobility in the Middle Ages, exempting the beneficiaries from the disgrace of physical labor, has laid deep roots in the education and economics of a proud people. It was said that manual work demeans a man to the level of a Moor or a serf, and there is still prejudice against manual labor in more modern times in Spain that has partly carried over to the New World. A hierarchical social structure was also evident, in addition to the culture of the nobility, which emphasizes literature, the arts, and philosophy—in short, the culture of gentility—at the expense of the sciences, mathematics, technology, and engineering. This was reflected in schooling and the curricula, where the former subjects were emphasized and the latter neglected. Schooling was verbalistic, relying on bookwork and learning by rote, rather than learning in the laboratory. Honorific recognition of superior effort was very highly regarded, and great emphasis was put on diplomas, titles, decorations and orders, citations, and other outward symbols of dignity. Courteous, indeed sometimes courtly, manners were widely practiced. As such, great weight was attached to one’s appearance. A functionary, even on a hot day, would rather be

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uncomfortable than coatless. The necktie was of course a badge of liberation from the social stigma of manual labor. While these are subjective impressions, reflecting the biases of my Anglo-Saxon mind, they certainly seemed to hold at least some validity in the early 1960s. In the 1970s and even more in the 1980s, such impressions faded, perhaps because of my growing awareness and perhaps because the Latin American countries were changing rapidly and assimilating North American and European attitudes, values, and institutions in social, economic, and political fields. The South American Indian world is poles apart from that of the Spanish invaders. Indeed, the two seem to have evolved on different planets. There are of course many separate and very diverse Indian cultures, as I eventually discovered. More important than the qualities of difference were the significant legacies of the conquest bequeathed to the twentieth century, indicating some powerful, rigid, and archaic institutions. The main ones we need to identify are: • the Spanish language, • Iberian versions of the Roman Catholic Church, • the usually powerful armed forces, with their autocratic tradition, which tended to claim a role as guardian of the state, • the great landed estates, whether of the more ancient feudalistic kind termed latifundio or hacienda, or the tropical plantation that was essentially a large capitalistic estate that was export-oriented; both required a very cheap labor force (péons or feudatarios ) and were frequently reliant on debt servitude, • the Hispanicized jurisprudence of Rome, • the concept of family as the center of national society, and • the tradition of the city as the ultimate vehicle of civilization.

The Importance of Cultural Ecology and History If we agree that geography studies humanity in nature, rather than apart from nature, the importance of an interactionist approach is clear. Before I began working in Latin America, I discovered the work of Julian Steward and his students. In the field of cultural ecology, Steward’s concepts of the “cultural core” and “levels of sociocultural integration” that comprise part

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of his Theory of Culture Change (1956) seemed to me to be clearly important to geographers concerned with interaction and adaptation. Their great value in Latin America has, I think, already been shown in the fields of archaeology and ethnohistory, suggesting multilinear patterns of evolution. But anyone who has worked in the Peruvian or Bolivian Altiplano knows the close interaction among certain elements of a slowly changing ecosystem: the implications, for example, of a primitive technology, acute population pressure, and the inheritance system on the fragmented system of minifundias. The role of the cultural core in the whole ecosystem may partially explain the slow rate of change. In-depth ecological studies should not produce merely circular reasoning, so common in structural studies, linking components of equal force, and Steward assigns extra significance (as Marx did to the mode of production) to the cultural core, including in this the economic system, environmental factors, technology, and those cultural elements that empirical studies show to be closely associated with the economy. Since Steward formulated his ideas, anthropologists and sociologists have used the concept of levels of sociocultural integration to examine the structural interrelatedness of institutions in Latin America, tracing the ecological impact of certain major institutions, such as the plantation or hacienda, on the nature of society, as well as the landscape. One of the most able monographs of this genre is the pioneering The People of Puerto Rico by Steward and his students, who included the young Eric Wolf, Sidney Mintz, Robert Manners, Elena Padilla Seda, and Raymond Scheele (Steward 1956). Their substantive cultural analyses of sugar plantations, the coffee haciendas, the producers of tobacco, and the urbanizing upper classes of San Juan developed a methodology for understanding communities or subcultural social segments in their larger context. The importance of a major institution, such as the plantation, in molding or proletarianizing workers coming from different backgrounds was analyzed, and the descriptions provided a major baseline by which to judge the trajectories of change in Puerto Rico. Colleagues, and previous students of Steward, Wolf, Nash and Lewis, have utilized these and other concepts within the framework of modernization (Steward 1956). Wolf, Nash, Lewis’ theory of culture change, which often is more useful (although less precise) than conventional economic approaches to the study of development, in that it widens the context to include, in addition to economic factors, social, cultural, and political processes (Watters 1994).

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My own approach to peasantry, as already stated, identified “1) the ethnographic cultural tradition, 2) Durkheimian tradition allied to functionalist sociology, 3) the specific economy approach, 4) the Marxist tradition of class analysis and the dependence approach, and 5) the ethnohistorical approach” (Watters 1994, p 11), with the specific economy approach being the most significant (Watters 1994). Another cultural-ecological concept of interest to geographers is Wolf’s depiction of “ecotypes,” which he defines as “systems of energy transfers from the environment to man” (Wolf 1966). He contrasts paleotechnic (dawn age) ecotypes, based on the employment of human and animal labor, with neotechnic (new age) ecotypes, which utilize energy supplied by combustible fuels and scientific skills. This is a holistic concept that— like that of “landscape”—involves the total structure. While stressing the harnessing of energy, it also embraces the economists’ concern with infrastructure or social overhead capital as factors in development. The value of the concept and other aspects of Wolf’s model of peasantry were shown in the examination of agrarian reform in Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico by Erasmus (1967), where it was indicated that agrarian reform accompanied by a change in ecotype was more instrumental in effecting fundamental social change (e.g., from “peasants“ to rural entrepreneurs or farmers) than an agrarian reform that did not involve change in infrastructure or ecotype. One of the most brilliant studies in this field of cultural ecology, however, is Geertz’s account of agricultural innovation in Indonesia, which offers geographers and other social scientists many illuminating insights into the ways in which a landscape in the process of change can be studied. Geertz does what most anthropologists fail to do: he links the micro with the macro and sees the “little community” in the context of the broad sweep of history. Without neglecting the unpredictable, idiosyncratic events of history, he traces the consequences inherent in certain ecological systems (sawah and swidden agriculture), the effects of rising prices on human choice and opportunities for emergent entrepreneurship, the implications of Dutch colonialist company policies and the seasonal requirements of the factory on labor mobility and rural overpopulation, and the effect of changing land-use systems on class structure (Geertz 1963). Reading Geertz reminds us that the real history of Latin America, like that of Indonesia, arises from the interplay between the personal and the local and the heavy intractable forces of the world economy: the growth

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of poles of development and the “backwash” of less favored or isolated regions; the resilience of rigid and archaic class structures (with an elite backed by power) and cohesive kinship systems, supported by appropriate value systems; the rise of forces of nationalism and other powerful ideologies supported or opposed, often by foreign interests; and the arrested development of massive institutional structures that are ill adapted to the requirements of more modern economic growth. While Latin American areas must of course be studied on their own terms, many appear also to have experienced the process that Geertz has termed “agricultural involution.” As such, it is clear that many Andean minifundio systems have maintained their basic features for a long time, only changing in becoming more elaborate with a growth of internal complexity and finesse. Corporate groups retain their identity, and the total social structure remains rather inflexible, subject as it is to “involution” and a siphoning off of surplus population by outmigration, which prevents structural change and perpetuates backwardness. The Venezuelan Andes discussed in Chapter 7 is a good example of this process. In view of geographers’ interest in interrelationships, it is perhaps surprising that there has been no classical ecological study by a geographer in Latin America, nothing to compare, for example, with Lattimore’s Inner Asian Frontiers of China. Although the Berkeley School of Geographers has set a very high standard of historical geographical writing, we lack the historical, ecological analysis in the Geertz manner that lays the socioeconomic structure bare. Indeed, it has been left primarily to economists, historians, anthropologists, and Gradual Institutional Change theory to trace the process by which Latin American coffee and sugar have been brought into the world economy while at the same time so many of the people of Latin America still suffer from arrested development. Few geographers, to my knowledge, have examined in depth the nature of the transition from engenho to usina (from sugarcane crushing by animal power to crushing by more modern mechanical mills) and the impact of these important institutional changes on local society, their land-use systems, and the regional economy.

Looking at the Inside: The Peasantry The peasantries of Latin America have long been used to money (although perhaps only to a kind of “penny capitalism’), markets and marketplaces, towns and indeed cities; to other classes, some of whom

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extract “rent” in the form of labor, cash payments, taxes, or tithes; and historically they have been part of an empire or state that has also shaped their lives. A classic description of peasantry has been provided by John Berger as: … always an economy within an economy. This is what enabled it to survive global transformations of the larger economy — feudal, capitalist, even socialist. Like all economies, it is embedded in a matrix of social institutions informed by cultural values. Peasantries are Janus-faced. Insofar as they support themselves, peasants are a “class apart.” But since they also produce a surplus, they are integrated, too, into the environing society and state. Their culture, therefore, like their economy, is never totally independent, nor does it remain static. … Their economic priority … is not to make profits, but to survive both the natural disasters … as well as the man-made ones … and to come through alive. But this is only the subsistence half of their economy: before they can eat they have to work for their masters. … The extraction of the surplus, so dryly analyzed in theoretical treatises, is singularly stark and transparent: the fruit of one’s labors had to be carried, sack by sack, to the landlord’s granaries. (Berger 1992, p 13)

In my study, a number of themes and purposes emerged: to identify and evaluate a number of major approaches to the peasantry; to locate the peasantry in its environmental and geographic milieu; and to consider, economic, cultural, social, and political forces that have shaped it, constraining, warping, repressing, or developing the peasant community. The framework for the study was provided by the powerful national and international forces that have buffered Mexico and Venezuela over the last 50 years, challenging the survival of the peasant subculture.

Latin America: Prerevolutionary Patterns and Revolutionary Forces of Change For most of the twentieth century, it is fair to say that Latin America was the most reactionary continent in the world. The prerevolutionary era around 1900 was marked by late-nineteenth-century rationalism and liberalism, where under autocratic governments, especially in Mexico, some industrialization began under conditions of peace, stability, rule of law, easy taxes, and encouragement of foreign investors. However, the economic growth that did occur was led by foreign firms and foreign entrepreneurs who settled in Latin America to buy large plantations or to

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set up mining or processing firms: no widespread economic development and modernization occurred. This kind of laissez-faire, neoliberalist form of development led to a social structure, as Manning Nash describes it: … made up of the wealthy, the aristocratic, the cosmopolitan, on the one side, and the peasant, the peon, the Indian, the poor urban mass, on the other side. This social class, as the pinnacle of the social order, devoted few resources and little time to the development of useful knowledge and created few agencies for the application of tested knowledge to processes of production. (Nash 1964)

The hacendados were largely endogamous, and there was little social mobility. They were the only class that had access to education, manners, and the income that could support their aristocratic lifestyle. They were also an urban elite, as they spent much of their time living in cities as their preferred place of residence, entertainment, and the full enjoyment of their cultured tastes. Thus, within the state, they had a regional base and formed local political blocs in coalition to support the old regimes. Underneath this upper-class segment and their underlings were the peasantry and the Indians. The peasantry lived partly in a dispersed pattern, but mainly in small villages, with a technology that had not changed greatly since the conquest. They were largely illiterate and impoverished, and were marginalized from urban and national life. As a result of diminishing land resources, they organized themselves as communities, a sort of closed corporate peasantry with built-in defensive mechanisms, to preserve their cohesive social structure in which their local cultural tradition could survive. By the middle of the twentieth century, however, the peasantry was starting to respond to new opportunities to change. Several critical factors were involved: the emergence of a middle class, or more properly the “middle groups” (in Mexico, the middle class doubled from 8% in 1895 to 16% in 1940, with a 215% increase in actual numbers); a steady increase in the rate of urbanization, with the urban population residing in cities growing from just over 40% in 1960 to almost 59% in 1980 (average of 12 Latin American countries) (Armstrong and McGee 2013); and the rise of important political and related social movements linked to the great ideologies of the Western world, which still had to triumph in this, the most reactionary continent: nationalism, internationalism, democracy, socialism, communism, and, we also need to add, the ideology of developmentalism.

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Latin American countries did not automatically follow Western models, however. For example, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)— the Institutional Revolutionary Party—in Mexico in the 1930s under Lázaro Cárdenas implemented some of the major goals of the Mexican Revolution, such as the first great expropriation of haciendas and their distribution to the peasantry. With time, the burning flame of revolutionary and reforming zeal began to flicker as the PRI became tired, jaded, and often corrupt, but it nevertheless played a major role in overcoming poverty and setting Mexico on a sound and promising journey toward progress. The socialism that José Carlos Mariátegui introduced to Peru (well known throughout Latin America) was quite different to that of the USSR. He foreshadowed the Peruvian Revolution of 1968– 1975 in his promotion of a new brand of indigenismo (political ideology of relationship between the state and indigenous population) and his belief that only by destroying the hacienda system could the shackles of feudalism be broken, enabling the Indian to progress. In the same way, the communism of Latin America is neither Chinese nor Russian, but Castroite. The developments of 2000–2012 are merely the more modern manifestations of the radical nationalism espoused, e.g., by the Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek in the 1960s, when he said, “We are on the side of the West, but do not want to be its proletariat” (Horowitz 1969). Brazil was indeed asserting that it had its own political and economic logic, its own framework for discussing development, and its own terms, rather than the slogans of inherited ideologies. Understandable though such nationalisms may be, they can at times—when allied to either futuristic rhetoric or security and strategic policies—lead to disastrous policies, such as the great assault on the Amazonian rainforest. Here, the nationalism of military dictators such as Medici and Geisel of Brazil and the democratically elected Belaúnde of Peru not only halted worthy efforts of internationalism to save the “lungs of the world” but also accelerated and drove the processes of destruction and deforestation. These radical nationalisms of course also served the interests of the elites of the day to manipulate the emerging masses who were threatening to overthrow them by promoting populist schemes, such as the building of Brasília or the development of Amazonia, which promised alluring symbols of progress as part of a solution for poverty or landlessness.

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Modernization and Change A fundamental approach to modernization and dealing with the selective pressures that impinge on the peasantry from the outside was made by both Max Weber and Werner Sombart (Weber 2009; Sombart 2001) in studying how modernization involves an imposition of rationality on ever-increasing sectors of social life. In his seminal book Peasants (1966), Eric Wolf used the analogy of “unwinding the rope,” by which “manystranded coalitions” or multiplex functions or roles (e.g., religion, political leadership, and folk medicine) that are often bound together in one individual in traditional society become “single-stranded coalitions”: the specialization and separation of functions or roles to different individuals as part of modernization. When the rope is unwound, the structure is weakened or lost. Wolf’s “unwinding the rope” analogy is close to Neil Smelser’s neoevolutionary model of modernization, which is relatively neutral (Smelser 1967; Bailey 1971). Smelser sees a developed economy and society as one characterized by a highly differentiated structure, while an underdeveloped one is relatively lacking in differentiation. As such, change involves the process of differentiation by which more specialized and autonomous social units are established in the economy, the family, the political system, and religious institutions. Smelser differs somewhat from Wolf’s “unwinding the rope” analogy: he sees modernization as an additive process, as well as an unwinding process. At its extreme, a country could suffer Crucifixion by Power, the evocative title of Richard Adams’s analysis of Guatemala, a country that has been termed Latin America’s Vietnam (Adams 1970). I was shocked at the poverty and injustice that I saw in the Guatemalan highlands. At the close of 1963, I visited a peasant village near Quetzaltenango, and a villager pointed out bullet holes in the adobe walls of a house. The village had been machine-gunned by American CIA jets that had intervened decisively in 1954 to support the counterrevolution of Carlos Castillo Armas. The intention was to overthrow the democratically elected leftwing government of Jacobo Arbenz, which had instituted much-needed land reform aimed at eliminating latifundios and semifeudalistic practices. I was told that at the time, an Argentine doctor, Che Guevara, was working as a volunteer in the village, tending to the sick. This was just one more incident that is said to have turned a liberal into a real revolutionary who later joined Fidel Castro and others in Mexico City to plan the

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invasion of Cuba. It became abundantly clear that my research approach had to identify and assess the effectiveness of power in its various forms: maintaining, underpinning, or changing structures, limiting freedom, or increasing repression or expropriation.

The Alliance for Progress Following the First World War, the countries of Latin America extended their infrastructure and improved their organizational skills and various businesses over the following four decades. However, by the 1950s, many Americans were aware that orthodox policies of industrial interventionism, even if accompanied by regional economic integration, in Latin America would not suffice to establish economies that had real potential for autonomous growth. Moreover, the somewhat spotty history of US aid and other external aid suggested that a much more thorough search for effective ways of promoting development was now required. The most significant factor of all, however, was the geopolitical situation at the time. Following the Castroite Revolution in Cuba, the strong possibility emerged that a left-wing revolution might break out in Colombia after the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. Colombia was a country of great potential and a strategic link between the Caribbean, Central America, and Andean South America. The Cold War then intensified between the US and the USSR, and the arena in which it played out was Latin America. After the Cuban Missile Crisis had passed, attention moved to the idea of a great aid project, and the Alliance for Progress was born. The idea was to make a large-scale semipermanent commitment to assisting overseas development in the Latin American countries. This was a commendable approach that went on to be successful but suffered initial problems from inexperience at planning level. The Alianza para el Progreso announced by President John F Kennedy in March 1961 committed US$20 billion over a ten-year period to 19 Latin American countries that were members of the Organization of American States (OAS). Between 1961 and 1965, the US committed $4.2 billion in grants, loans, goods, and technical assistance, of which $3.9 billion went to OAS countries and the rest to small countries and colonies, such as those in the Caribbean. In turn, Latin American nations invested from $22 billion to $24 billion in development projects, and more than $1 billion more came from foreign lenders and international agencies. President Lyndon Johnson reported that 25 million people, including 13 million small children, were receiving food

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from the Alliance program. “More than 1.5 million people have a new home. A million children have new classrooms, and 10 million textbooks have been produced” (Diplomatic and consular service 1965), he said. Illiteracy declined from 50% of Latin America’s population in 1961 to 43% in 1964. The number of universities in Latin America grew from 160 to 196 over the same period. Even more important were issues of reform, social justice, and economic progress. Fourteen countries now had tax and land reforms under way, leading to higher tax collection, and ten nations submitted detailed development programs for Alliance consideration. Resulting from this investment, Latin America’s gross national product grew steadily over the first four years. However, the Alliance had its problems. Three key issues have been noted: the slowness of some countries to execute reforms, poor local planning, and the declining market for basic Latin American commodities. More fundamentally, the Alliance was seriously flawed in its approach. There were a number of shortcomings, some serious. A long-term commitment to foreign aid was necessary, but this was slow in coming, and hence, the whole program was characterized by a sense of improvisation or contingency. Appropriations varied greatly from year to year with little certainty of continuity in the longer run, and foreign-assistance efforts were shared by a multiplicity of agencies, both national and international, with little coordination. Several times over the years, a substantial portion of the US foreign-assistance program was reorganized, and with changes in objectives and turnover of personnel, further complications occurred. Changes of regimes in Latin American countries also occurred. On both donor and recipient sides, policies for recruiting, training, and retaining personnel were often inadequate. In both the multilateral and bilateral assistance fields, a project-by-project approach occurred, but there was insufficient attention by both donors and recipients on how specific undertakings and loans might fit into a comprehensive plan of redressing the problems of economic backwardness. The Alliance for Progress has been one of the largest overseas aid schemes for developing countries of Latin America. However, in spite of the massive infusion of aid funds, the whole program seems to have been seriously flawed in its approach. Based on the principles of Western liberalism, it provided transfers of technology on the assumption that the classes most in need would respond just as (if not more) quickly than

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the cholo and mestizo rural classes, who were more literate. The mestizos and cholos were better educated and more aware than the masses of rural Indian poor. They were the first to hear of new nurseries of superior coffee varieties or pig-breeding centers. People could come and get seedlings or piglets free, but as the mestizos and cholos arrived first, by the time peasants had heard about it and arrived, all the stocks had gone (Watters 1994).

Economic Policies and the CEPAL Approach In the 1950s, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLA; Spanish/Portuguese CEPAL), under the leadership of Raúl Prebisch, developed a new development plan. The strategy of CEPAL was based on the thesis that food and other primary-product exports on which Third World countries tended to rely are income-inelastic (i.e., as incomes rise, demand does not rise as much), whereas on the other hand, as incomes rise, the demand for manufactured goods, produced mainly in developed industrialized economies, rises more than proportionately. Therefore, Third World countries stand to gain least from growth in world income as long as they continue to specialize in non-manufacturing sector output. The policy prescription was to encourage the growth of industries that had a high-income elasticity of demand, and the method of achieving this was the establishment of import-substituting industries, usually behind protective tariff barriers and other import controls. The US opposed the “regionalization” of the UN, as represented by the establishment of the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE), and then CEPAL in 1948. It also opposed the theoretical and policy position of CEPAL. In the short term, CEPAL policies enjoyed widespread popularity throughout Central and South America, and for a while importsubstitution industrialization worked, but the longer-term experience suggested that the strategy was, if not wrong, at least inadequate. In Brazil, with a large population and generous resources, it was moderately successful as part of the Brazilian model of growth. However, the industrial processes required inputs that had to be imported, and thus created another kind of dependence—technological and financial. Secondly, given the skewed pattern of income distribution in Latin America, the demand for manufactured goods was confined to a relatively small elite, and when satisfied, the growth process came to an end. The CEPAL thesis rejected

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the conventional wisdom on the relationship between international trade and development. It also created an alternative framework, the center– periphery model, in which the nations of the “center” benefit primarily from trade, whereas the “peripheral” nations suffer (CEPAL 2002). Earlier neo-Marxist views after the Second World War accepted that some evolution of capitalist development existed in colonies, but increasingly a different analysis emerged. Underdevelopment was now seen as a continuous process rather than an original state that would be overcome by development, and the principal cause of underdevelopment was identified as capitalist penetration. The main proponents of these theories were Paul Baran and the North American Monthly Review group (Baran 1957). Baran’s views of underdevelopment arose from his analysis of US capitalism as an irrational system in terms of its internal logic and its effects on developing countries. He focused on how the actual surplus was produced and used compared to the potential surplus of a rational economic organization (which he believed socialism could be). The colonized areas were deprived of their economic surplus through the mechanisms of imperialist exploitation. This he regarded as the origin of underdevelopment. Later, Andre Gunder Frank elaborated on this new Marxist analysis by taking it to its logical conclusion in his “development of underdevelopment” thesis (Frank 1967). Following the predominance of the economic nationalist views of Raúl Prebisch (1950) and the Brazilian economist Celso Furtado (1963), a whole variety of “dependence schools” arose. While the notion of imperialism was imported from Europe, dependencia as an approach was largely an indigenous Latin American creation.2 These views rejected the modernization paradigm. Theotonio dos Santos defined dependence as a “conditioning situation in which the economies of one group of countries are conditioned by the development and expansion of others” (dos Santos 1970). While the CEPAL economists had put more emphasis on external factors bearing on Third World countries, dos Santos especially emphasized internal factors: the result of the “conditioning” process was the emergence of a dependent capitalism, unable to break the chains with metropolitan centers and achieve its full development. Like Prebisch, Stephany Griffith-Jones, and Osvaldo Sunkel, he also emphasized the world dimension in all economies, including the debt problem that became viewed as a time bomb. By the early 1980s, the three largest debtors to international banks

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were Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, and there were fears that unilateral actions to suspend payments would trigger a collapse of the international banking system (Griffith-Jones and Sunkel 1986). Dependence theory went beyond economics in attempting to provide a general explanation of underdevelopment. The radical dependentistas in fact were often sociologists like Frank who conceived of dependence as a sociopolitical phenomenon, which in turn makes room for an even more complex view of the center–periphery relationship.3 Perhaps the most famous book on dependence, which likens the condition to a ruthless stripping of lifeblood, argues that: Latin America is the region of open veins. … Production methods and class structure have been successively determined from outside for each area by meshing it into the universal gearbox of capitalism. To each area has been assigned a function, always for the benefit of the foreign metropolises of the moment, and the endless chain of dependency has been endlessly extended. (Galeano 1997)

The policy implication of the dependence-school view was for countries to dissociate themselves from the world market that doomed them to underdevelopment, because linkage to the center involved chains of surplus extraction. Only when this was done by adopting an independent stance of national self-reliance would real autonomous development begin. There would need to be more or less revolutionary transformation. A significant factor new at the time was the foundation of the Peace Corps (American) and Volunteer Service Overseas (British) which involved many keen field workers to work in peasant villages. The role of these volunteers was often innovative, based on sound common sense, and assisted local leaders to plan and introduce new initiatives that achieved significant positive change for peasants, e.g., access to clean water and education and development of leadership (Watters 1994). By the late 1970s, my own economic views had changed to what can be called a more recent “nonstructural position,” which “views underdevelopment in terms of international and domestic power relationships, institutional and structural economic rigidities, and the resulting proliferation of dual economies and dual societies both within and among the nations of the world” (Toledo 1990). However, the “economy” must not be conceived in such a lofty, exalted, and all-inclusive way as to gloss over the real living component parts of it, such as the peasantry, which often

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operates in a separate and relatively self-contained way. Since the 1970s, we have needed to add the various new schools of thinking that have moved steadily to a more comprehensive, indigenously geographically, and environmentally sustainable oriented form of development.

Notes 1. I developed my ideas on the nature and role of geography in my paper “Geography as a social science: A more functional geography for Latin America” (East Lakes Geographer. 1970;6:5–26). 2. Latin American economists in the 1950s–1960s believed inflation was not primarily related to the money supply, but to various inelasticities and institutional rigidities—they became “structuralists.” In the postwar years, the UN committed itself to economic reconstruction, setting up ECE and ECAFE, but saw no need for such an institution for Latin America, which the US interpreted as a declaration of independence. In spite of this hostility, CEPAL was established in 1948 in Santiago, Chile. Latin American economists following Prebisch attacked conventional ideas on the relationship between international trade and development, presenting the alternative center–periphery model. In this view, only “central” nations benefited from trade, while “peripheral” nations suffered (primarily because of trends in terms of trade, political asymmetry, and technological factors). In terms of development strategy, Latin American economists followed the CEPAL approach by promoting industrialization through import substitution, planning, state intervention, and regional integration. A wider variety of these dependence approaches emerged in the 1970s, continuing the long tradition of economic nationalism. See Björn Hettne’s Development Theory and the Three Worlds: Towards an International Political Economy of Development (London: Longman; 1995). 3. A good and popular example was Andre Gunder Frank’s Sociology of Development and Underdevelopment of Sociology (Stockholm: Zenit, 1969).

References Adams RN. Crucifixion by Power: Essays on Guatemalan National Social Structure, 1944–1966. Austin: University of Texas Press; 1970. Armstrong W, McGee TG. Theatres of Accumulation: Studies in Asian and Latin American Urbanization. Abingdon, UK: Routledge; 2013. Bailey FG. The peasant view of the bad life. In: Shanin T (editor). Peasants and Peasant Societies (pp 299–321). London: Penguin; 1971. Baran PA. Political Economy of Growth. New York: Monthly Review Press; 1957.

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Berger J. Into Their Labours: Pig Earth, Once in Europa, Lilac and Flag—A Trilogy. London: Pantheon Books; 1992. Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe. Globalization and Development. Santiago: CEPAL; 2002. dos Santos TD. The structure of dependence. American Economic Review. 1970;60(2):231–236. Erasmus CJ. Upper limits of peasantry and agrarian reform: Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico compared. Ethnology. 1967;6(4):349–380. Escobar A. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Vol 1. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 1995. Frank AG. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. Vol 93. New York: Monthly Review Press; 1967. Frank AG. Sociology of Development and Underdevelopment of Sociology. Stockholm: Zenit; 1969. Furtado C. The Economic Growth of Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press; 1963. Galeano E. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Melbourne: Scribe; 1997. Geertz C. Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia. Berkeley: University of California Press; 1963. Griffith-Jones S, Sunkel O. Debt and Development Crises In Latin America: The End of an Illusion. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1986. Harry S Truman Library and Museum. Inaugural Address. 1949. Available at: https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/19/inaugural-add ress. Accessed August 20, 2020. Hemming J. Tree of Rivers: The Story of the Amazon. London: Thames and Hudson; 2009. Horowitz IL. The norm of illegitimacy: the political sociology of Latin America. In: Horowitz IL, de Castro J, Gerassi J (editors). Latin American Radicalism: A Documentary Report on Left and Nationalist Movements (pp 3–28). New York: Random House; 1969. Kindon S. Contesting development. In: Le Heron R, Murphy L, Forer P, Goldstone H (editors). Explorations in Human Geography: Encountering Place. Auckland: Oxford University Press; 1999. Nash M. Social prerequisites to economic growth in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Economic Development Cultural Change. 1964;12(3):225–242. Polanyi K, MacIver R. The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon Press; 1957. Prebisch R. The Economic Development of Latin America and Its Principal Problems. New York: United Nations; 1950. Rahnema M. Poverty. In: Sachs W (editor). The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books; 1992.

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Rist G. The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. London: Zed Books; 1997. Schurz WL. This New World: The Civilization of Latin America. New York: EP Dutton; 1954. Scott JC. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press; 1998. Smelser N. Towards a Theory of Modernization. New York: Natural History Press; 1967. Sombart W. Economic Life in the Modern Age. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books; 2001. Steward JH. The Peoples of Puerto Rico. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press; 1956. Toledo VM. The Ecological Rationality of Peasant Production. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press; 1990. US Department of State. Department of State Newsletter. Washington: Department of State; 1965. Watters RF. Geography as a social science: A more functional geography for Latin America. East Lakes Geographer. 1970;6:5–26. Watters RF. Poverty and Peasantry in Peru’s Southern Andes, 1963–90. London: The Macmillan Press Ltd.; 1994. Weber M. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. New York: Simon and Schuster; 2009. Wolf E. Peasants. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall; 1966.

CHAPTER 3

The Agroecological Revolution

When I began my initial studies of peasantry and the rural sector in 1963 in the Venezuelan Andes, I admit that despite noting some aspects of resilience, some experiences of the persistence of some archaic practices led me to believe that on the whole, peasantry was an outmoded system of production that was doomed to be replaced by more modern forms of capitalist agriculture. However, for several decades now, it has become increasingly apparent that in the situation of the growing world population, Western forms of industrial agriculture have exerted increasing pressure on ecosystems that are steadily being degraded and which are now dangerously dependent on the ecological services provided by nature (e.g., climate balance, pollination, biological control, soil fertility). These services are steadily undermined as industrial agriculture continues to push beyond the tipping point (Altieri and Toledo 2011).

The Revival of the Peasantry Before the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, there were 1.5 billion smallholders, family farmers, and indigenous people living on about 350 million small farms (Altieri 1995; ETC Group 2009). While it is extremely difficult to establish the actual numbers, some estimate that about 50% of these peasants use resource-conserving farming systems, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Watters, Rural Latin America in Transition, Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65033-9_3

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thus demonstrating the remarkable resilience of traditional ecosystems, despite continuous environmental and economic change. At the same time, they contribute substantially to food security locally, as well as at regional and national levels. Although this trend occurred within the peak-oil period, it became apparent to most agroecologists that traditional agroecosystems had the potential to provide solutions for increasingly perilous situations emerging from global climate change and financial crisis. While there are of course local variations in techniques employed, Altieri and Toledo point out six features that commonly reappear in different geographical areas and local contexts: • high levels of biodiversity play significant roles in regulating how ecosystems function, and also provide ecosystem services of local and global importance; • ingenious systems and technologies that manage and conserve landscape, and land and water resources also improve the management of agroecosystems; • diversified agricultural systems contribute to local and national food and livelihood security; • agroecosystems, some of which have evolved over many centuries, commonly exhibit resilience and robustness in coping with both environmental and human disturbance and change, minimizing risk and catastrophic loss; • commonly, agroecosystems are nurtured by traditional-knowledge systems and have evolved through difficult times of natural and human catastrophes in which farmers’ innovations and technologies have been tested and sometimes modified; and • sociocultural institutions regulated by strong cultural values and collective forms of social organization and organizing labor include normative arrangements for resource access, benefit sharing, reciprocity, value systems, and rituals, and these institutions and practices are well understood and usually stable over long periods (Altieri and Toledo 2011). Peasant landscapes are of course very different from modern capitalistic agricultural landscapes. Using multiple resources, traditional farmers create landscape mosaics of rich biological diversity. In particular, a high degree of plant diversity is exhibited in polycultures and/or agroforestry

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patterns. In Mexico, the characteristic peasant unit in the tropics is the milpa, or dependence on a few fields used in a shifting cultivation system, cropping for one to three years before fallowing under regenerating forest for about ten years. Increasingly, peasant communities are experimenting with the fallow system, sometimes introducing nitrogen-fixing plants within forest fallow or orchards of fruit-bearing trees, along with natural forest plants, such as coffee, into the forest fallow (Watters 1973). Their strategy minimizes risks by planting several species and varieties of crop, each suited to the particular microclimate or site. This practice stabilizes yields over the long term, promotes diet diversity, and maximizes returns, even with low levels of technology and limited resources. On these diverse agricultural units, one can find nutrient-enriching plants, insect predators, pollinators, nitrogen-fixing and nitrogendecomposing bacteria, and a variety of other organisms that provide useful ecological functions. Traditional agroecosystems often contain populations of variable or adapted landraces and wild and weedy relatives of crops. Such genetic diversity acts like a bank in providing security to the farmer against diseases, pests, drought, floods, and other stresses and also allows farmers to exploit the full range of agroecosystems in each region according to soil quality, altitude, exposure to sun/shade, slope, and water availability. As such, the stability of the milpa cropping system is enhanced by genetic diversity and exploitation of different microclimates and fallow systems. Multiple production systems thus integrate mosaics of different crops (often maize, beans, and squash) or crops with livestock, fallow fields, and agroforestry systems, which sometimes include primary as well as secondary forest. Leaving primary forest untouched is usually wise, however, for protection against erosion and to capture carbon. This heterogeneity is likely to create stability and resilience to this system. For about four decades, Latin American agroecologists have been arguing that more modern farming systems will need to be modified and to return to their roots by adopting the ecological rationale of indigenous agriculture. Only then will promising agricultural pathways, modeled on traditional farming systems, be able to lead in designing biodiverse, sustainable, resilient, and efficient agriculture.

Food, Peasants, and Agroecology in Latin America Increasingly, many countries and regions around the world are being challenged to have the ability to feed themselves. This also applies to Latin

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America as a whole and to Mexico. Historically, most countries have had dual economies, divided between a modern capitalistic sector and a traditional/peasant sector. Although a few countries like Costa Rica have avoided dualism through wise management by competent governments, most Latin American countries still have dual sectors. The more modern sector usually comprises a modern urban industrial area and an imported capitalistic, specialized, export-oriented agricultural sector, whereas the traditional sector consists of small indigenous farms following customary ways of cultivation. Specifically, we can attribute the difference to both sociological dualism and economic dualism. As Julius Boeke, the Dutch economist of the 1920s–1950s, emphasized, dualism does exist and the two sectors are completely different from each other, leading to a clash between them. He quoted Rudyard Kipling’s famous phrase: “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.” However, decolonization proceeded rapidly after the Second World War, and although ethnic and class differences still exist, gradually the gulf between the two sectors has narrowed considerably in many countries, and an increase in exchanging ideas and approaches between the two sectors has occurred (Boeke 1953).

The New Agroecological Revolution in Latin America Around the end of the first decade in the twenty-first century, it became clear that a significant new agroecological revolution had begun in Latin America. As agroexports and biofuels continue to expand in Latin America and the planet’s continents warm, the concepts of food sovereignty and agroecology-based agricultural production have gained greater attention. Indeed, it has become clear that agroecology has provided the scientific, methodological, and technological basis for this impressive new movement worldwide. Agroecology-based systems are biodiverse, resilient, energy-efficient, and socially just and thus form the basis of an energy-, production-, and food-sovereignty strategy. The aim has been to employ agroecological initiatives to transform industrial agriculture, partly by transitioning existing food systems away from fossil fuel-based production, largely for agroexport crops and biofuels, toward an alternative agricultural paradigm, one that encourages local/national food production by small family farms, based on local innovation, resources, and solar energy. This requires peasants to have access

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to land, seeds, water, credit, and local markets, partly through creating supportive economic policies, financial incentives, market opportunities, and agroecological technologies. The significant issue is that agroecology must go beyond alternative farming practices and develop agroecosystems that have minimum dependence on high agrochemical and energy inputs. Agroecology is both a science and a set of practices. As a science, it needs to design the diversification of farms in order to promote beneficial biological interactions and synergy among the components of the agroecosystem so that these may alter soil fertility to regenerate and maintain productivity and crop protection. Core principles of agroecology include recycling nutrients and energy on the farm, rather than introducing external inputs; enhancing soil organic matter and soil biological activity; diversifying plant species and genetic resources in agroecosystems over time and space; integrating crops and livestock; and optimizing interactions and productivity of total farming systems, rather than the yields of individual species. Sustainability and resilience are achieved when the diversity and complexity of farming systems are enhanced via polycultures, rotations, agroforestry, use of native seeds and local breeds of livestock, encouraging natural enemies of pests, and using composts and green manure to enhance organic soil matter, thus improving biological soil activity and water-retention capacity. Organic farming systems are not necessarily a good approach if they are still managed as monocultures that are in turn dependent on external biological and/or botanic (i.e., organic) inputs and rely on foreign and volatile markets. Agroecology is highly knowledge-intensive, based on techniques that are not delivered in a top-down way, but on farmers’ knowledge and experimentation, thus emphasizing the capabilities of local communities and their social processes, which value community involvement. In this context, agroecology promotes community-oriented approaches and often traditional methods of reciprocity that often remain strong in peasant villages, such as periodically clearing irrigation ditches. Community-oriented approaches look after the subsistence needs of members and emphasize self-reliance, and there is the usual presence of community grain banks. This approach favors the local markets by shortening the circuits of food production and consumption, thus avoiding the high needs of “long-distance food.” Such agricultural systems have not only fed much of the world’s population for centuries and continue to feed many all over the globe,

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especially in developing countries, but also hold many of the potential answers to the production and natural resource conservation challenges affecting many rural landscapes today. The purpose of this chapter is to promote the agroecological approach and assist the revitalization of small farms and social processes that value community involvement and empowerment. This is seen as the only reliable option in Mexico and Latin America (and indeed in most of the world) to meet total food needs in an age of high oil prices and global climate change.

Food Crises in the Twenty-First Century In 2011, at the time of writing (Altieri and Toledo 2011) and still today, poverty reduction and food security are elusive goals for at least 1 billion people worldwide. High levels of hunger persist (at times leading to starvation), there is pronounced inequity in distribution of income, land, water, seeds, and other resources, and ecological degradation is persistent and often getting worse in many regions at both local and global levels. Billions of dollars have been invested in “aid,” “development,” and various technological “advances,” but the situation is getting worse for these people, due to their increasing marginalization resulting from the aforementioned processes. Since the industrial model of agriculture is in the ascendancy, the capacity of humankind to feed itself is being steadily undermined by the increasing costs of fossil fuels and the steady deterioration of the climate and global ecology. The limits and vulnerability of the industrial model of agriculture are becoming more apparent, due to its low ecological diversity and narrow genetic base. Indeed, it has been argued convincingly that global food security can be considered the weak link between ecological and economic crises that afflict the planet. The “perfect storm” of 2007–2008 occurred with an alarming rise in the cost of food that sent an additional 75 million people to the food lines and tent shelters of desperate people, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Surprisingly, there had been no drought then (the usual cause of hunger) and there was plenty of food in the markets. For no obvious reason, the price of staple foods, such as maize and rice, nearly doubled in a few months. More than 20 countries had food riots, and governments heavily subsidized food staples and banned food exports (Altieri and Toledo 2011; Vidal 2011; Holt-Giménez and Patel 2009). The UN Food and Agriculture Organization offered an explanation, asserting that large farmers in the US, Brazil, and other countries had

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taken millions of hectares of land out of production to grow biofuels for vehicles, oil and fertilizer prices had risen greatly, the Chinese were shifting from a vegetarian diet to a meat-based diet, and climate change-linked droughts were seriously affecting major crop-growing areas. However, the same year that hunger expanded (2008), cereal yields reached unprecedented levels and the great merchants of grain and corporate agricultural input and seed providers like Monsanto reaped huge profits. A large part of the problem is linked to the deregulation of international commodity markets, the privatization and/or elimination of grain markets in some countries, and more recently the entry of speculative capital into the commodity market. The same banks, hedge funds, and financiers whose speculation on the global money markets triggered off the subprime-mortgage crisis are again thought to be responsible, causing food prices to inflate. Between January 2006 and February 2008, financial investments pushed the prices of many food crops to higher values than those crops would normally have reached (Altieri and Toledo 2011; Kaufman 2010). Contracts to buy and sell foods (cocoa, fruit juices, sugar, staples, meat, and coffee) were turned into “derivatives” that can be “bought and sold among traders who have nothing to do with agriculture“ (Altieri and Toledo 2011; Hari 2010). Food prices continued to rise beyond 2008 levels: at the time of writing, they were rising by up to 10% a year, and some believed it was possible that they could increase by at least 40% in the decade 2010–2020 (Rosset 2009). Each time that food prices increase, unfortunately a significant number of peasant and family farmers are expelled from the market: firstly, due to the low price they receive for their product, and secondly due to the high costs of inputs, principally fertilizers. At the same time, the cost of food for consumers increases independently of what the price of wheat, corn, or rice may be in the global commodity markets. Therefore, deregulation, privatization, and free-market treaties have a negative effect on both small farmers and consumers (Vidal 2011). The situation is also aggravated by the systematic elimination of national production capacity by promoting agroexports and biofuels that are partly supported by government subsidies, which make a mockery of normal market practices of supply and demand fixing appropriate prices. Another new factor is land-grabbing, led by such governments as the Gulf States and China and wealthy investors (often American) who buy or lease land on an immense scale for intensive agriculture for offshore food and

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biofuel production (Altieri and Toledo 2011, p 590). In the end, as cynically observed, “[T]he new crisis is just a new face of the old rural crisis” derived from the almost total control of the food system by transnational capital, aided by neoliberal programs implemented by some governments.

Revival of Ancient Forgotten Foods? Most governments all around the world, conscious of short 3- to 6-year election cycles, unfortunately concentrate on policies that are relatively short term. Few seriously plan for the long term or even for the vital next 20 years. This certainly applies to the rediscovery and revival of ancient forgotten foods. The risky tendency to continue to rely on only four favorite and reliable foods for most of the world’s population shows how dangerously narrow and insecure the world food system is in this day and age of so-called advanced transnational capitalism. Presently, 60% of the world’s food depends on only four crops: wheat, rice, maize, and soybean (Altieri and Toledo 2011, p 590). Fortunately, Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, who occasionally revives important neglected issues, such as his vision of biodiversity and sustainable agriculture, has launched a project to reexamine little-known “forgotten foods,” with the aim of bringing some of them back into favor. A new venture—the Forgotten Foods Network—has been established, aiming to harness the power of ingredients once eaten by the Aztecs, Incas, Mayans (all Latin American), Greeks, and Romans. While many of us today, as working consumers, might choke on eating some delicious pigweed, it is vital that diets around the world are diversified to introduce little-known, underutilized crops in case one of the four current world staples fails as a result of plant disease, pesticide resistance, or climate change. The staple crops provide enough calories, but they are not as nutritious as many other plants that have fallen from favor. A Malaysian organization—Crops for the Future—led by Professor Sayed Azam-Ali, is currently testing little-known foods for their nutritional value and growing ability in hotter weather as the world’s climate changes. Prince Charles officially launched the project, praising it as “impressive,” although it was already “almost too late.” This project does indeed seem to be impressive and highly significant. It would appear that similar organizations with the same goal should be set up in each of the major plant biomes of the world (Furness 2017).

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A similar example is wild rice, which grows in northern Australia’s crocodile-infested waters. It could hold the key to breeding a more nutritious grain that is drought- and pest-resistant, according to scientists who have mapped its genetic family tree. International researchers, including Robert Henry from the University of Queensland, have examined 13 domesticated and wild-rice species globally in the hope of breeding commercial rice from the Australian variety Oryza meridionalis. Rice is a staple food for half the world’s population, and consumption levels are rising. The Australian rice was found to have valuable traits that could be bred into commercial rice, which could have a really positive impact on human health on a large scale. The Australian rice shared the same ancestor with an Asian species consumed by millions today, but evolved 3 million years ago. It has probably been overlooked until now due to its location in crocodile-infested waters. Rod Wing of the University of Arizona says wild-rice species globally provided “a virtually untapped reservoir of genes” that could be used to improve current species. Since 2003, Wing has been leading global research into 25 wild-rice varieties that are genetically similar to two rice varieties consumed globally today. The next research will focus on a wild rice that grows in saltwater. “The world population could be 10 billion by 2050,” says Wing, “and the question is how do we feed our world without destroying it?” Genetic information could allow scientists “to make crops that are higher-yielding and more nutritious, but did less harm to the environment by using less water or pesticides,” he said (Wild Australian rice may help in feeding the world 2018).

Traditional Peasant Agriculture: The Basis of a New Agroecological Approach In 2009, the European Technical Commission (ETC Group 2009) estimated that worldwide, there were about 1.5 billion smallholders, family farmers, peasants, and indigenous people living on about 350 million small farms. It is extremely difficult to calculate actual numbers, but it is estimated that about 50% of these peasants use resource-conserving farm systems, illustrating the remarkable resilience of traditional agroecosystems despite continuing environmental and economic change, while they contribute substantially to food security at local, regional, and national levels (ETC Group 2009). Clearly, there is a marked difference between

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food systems based on peasant agroecological production and consumption and large agroindustrial production units and food chains. Table 3.1 compares the two. In my study on shifting agricultural systems in Mexico in 1960 (Watters 1960), I visited a huge number of peasant and small-farm landscapes in Mexico in the predominantly hot, wet regions—the states of Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, Colima, and Guerrero—and also Oaxaca and Chiapas, in which temperate highlands can be found, as well as some tropical zones. Overwhelmingly, I saw milpas (small-scale shifting-cultivation systems) and mosaics of cropping systems, including some with livestock, with fallow systems and cropping plots immersed in a matrix of primary forest (left as protective forestry) and secondary forest. Such heterogeneity usually meant each system was characterized Table 3.1 Some major differences between industrial and agroecology-based peasant-food systems Industrial food systems

Agroecological peasant food systems

Agroexport crop and biofuel production, thousands of food miles, major emissions of greenhouse gases Focus on fewer than 20 livestock and crop species Large-scale monocultures

Local, regional, and/or national food production, local production, and consumption circuits More than 40 livestock species and thousands of edible plants Small-scale diversified farming systems, 19 million landraces and local crop varieties

High-yielding varieties, hybrids, and transgenic crops High petroleum dependence and agrochemical input Fertilizers for crop nutrition (to feed the plants) Top-down, technical extension schemes, corporation-controlled scientific research

Narrow technological knowledge of plants Inserted in simplified, degraded natural matrix inconducive to conservation of wild species

Local resources, ecosystem services provided by biodiversity Plant- and animal-derived organic matter to feed the soil Campesino a Campesino (farmer to farmer) movement, local innovations, socially oriented horizontal exchanges via social movements Holistic knowledge of nature, cosmovision Inserted in nature’s matrix that provides ecological services to production systems (e.g., pollination, biological pest control)

Sources Rosset (2009), ETC Group (2009), Altieri and Toledo (2011)

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by stability and resilience. Apart from a few that departed from the norm, mainly due to population pressure, the great majority of these traditional systems have stood the tests of time, representing models of sustainability as they promote biodiversity, thrive without using agrochemicals, and sustain year-round yields. In contrast to some experiences in Venezuela, I found in Mexico, and especially in Chiapas and Oaxaca states, ancient agrarian systems that exhibited vitality and stability. Increasingly, Latin America, as well as many other major regions of the world, is being challenged in its ability to feed itself. On the one hand, there is the specialized competitive export-oriented agricultural sector, usually but not always larger scale, which does make a significant and positive contribution to the national economy, while at the same time bringing a variety of environmental, economic, and social problems, including negative effects on public health, ecosystem integrity, and sometimes food quality. At the same time, the establishment of these huge ventures disrupts traditional rural livelihoods while accelerating indebtedness among thousands of farmers. Moreover, since the main drive is to maximize output and profit, the intensification of the operation is often the worst aspect, as it often increases the danger of environmental damage and decline. The growing push towards industrialization and globalization is certainly strong in Mexico today, with increasing emphasis on such export crops as transgenic soybeans for cattle feed or fattening chickens for markets in China, Europe, the US, and other regions. At the same time, the increasing demand for biofuel crops (e.g., maize, sugar cane, soybean, oil palm, and eucalyptus) is increasingly changing the landscape, reshaping the agricultural pattern and food supply. While the full impacts and risks are not yet completely known, increasingly the danger signs and negative outcomes are becoming apparent, adding to the worries of policymakers. On the other hand, there is in Latin America a peasant or small-farm sector with a population estimated at about 65 million, including 40–50 million indigenous people speaking about 725 languages. Estimates in about 2000 suggested these peasant small-farming systems of an average size of 1.8 hectares per household produced 51% of the maize, 77% of the beans, and 61% of potatoes consumed in Latin America (Altieri and Toledo 2011, p 593; Altieri 1999). In Mexico, it is estimated that peasants occupy at least 70% of the area cultivated for maize and 60% of the area for beans (Altieri 1999).

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Social and Economic Change: Transition from Traditional Subsistence Agriculture to Semicommercial and Commercial Farming The peasantry in Latin America is a highly heterogeneous group—socially, culturally, and also ecologically—as I have found in all the Latin American countries I have studied. They can be arranged in a gradient from subsistence farms based on local resources and agroecological techniques to semicommercial and commercial farmers using agrochemical imports and linked to national and international markets. In many regions in southern Mexico, it is often possible to find farmers involved in a pure form of traditional agriculture all the way to peasants who have partially or totally adopted the agroindustrial mode of production. The gradient can be arranged into nine levels, varying from stage 0 Ag of traditional peasantry through to the other extreme of agroindustry—9 Ag. When peasants have moved beyond 6 Ag in their conversion to the agroindustrial model, they have modified their systems so profoundly (i.e., adopted specialized monocultures with hybrids of high energy and input dependence) that reconverting to agroecological management may prove very difficult or impossible when they reach 9 Ag. Most farmers between 0 Ag and 5 Ag incorporate various elements of agroecological management using myriad community-based agricultural systems that promote diversity, sustain yields without using agrochemicals, conserve ecological integrity, and still make a substantial contribution to domestic food security in their area. A classic issue that is often debated is the relationship between farm size and productivity. However, it has been noted that “small family farms are much more productive than large farms if total output is considered rather than yield from a single crop” (Rosset 2000; Desmarais 2007). Integrated farming systems producing grains, fruit, vegetables, fodder, and animal products outproduce the yield per unit of single crops, such as corn (monocultures), on large-scale farms. A large farm may produce more corn per hectare than a small farm, but corn grown as part of a polyculture unit also includes beans, squash, potatoes, and fodder also do well. In 2010, in returning to Zinacantán, a Highland Maya community in Chiapas, southern Mexico, I was very impressed with the high productivity of corn, beans, and squash interplanted in rows. It has been asserted that in polycultures developed by smallholders, productivity in terms of harvestable products per unit area is higher than under sole cropping with

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the same level of management. Yield advantages can range 20–60%, since polycultures reduce losses from weeds, insects, and diseases and also make more efficient use of available water, light, and nutrients (Beets 1982). Studies in Mexico have shown that a 1.73-hectare plot of land has to be planted with maize monoculture to produce as much food as 1 hectare planted with a mixture of maize, squash, and beans. Moreover, the maize– squash–bean polyculture produces up to 4 tons per hectare of dry matter for plowing into the soil compared to 2 tons in a maize monoculture. The energy return to labor spent in a typical Highland Mayan maize farm is high enough to ensure the continuation of the present system. To work a hectare of land, which usually yields about 4,230,692 calories, requires about 395 hours, so an hour’s labor produces about 10,700 calories. It is estimated a family of three adults and seven children eat about 4,830,000 calories of maize per year. As such, it is suggested current systems provide food security for a family of five or seven (Wilken 1990), with favorable rates of return between inputs and outputs in energy terms. On Mexican hillsides, maize yields in hand labor-dependent swidden (shifting cultivation) systems are about 1,940 kilograms/hectare for an output:input ratio of 11:1 (Altieri and Toledo 2011, p 596). It is interesting comparing these production figures with the data I collected in the same Highland Maya region in 1964. At that time, the average harvest of maize per hectare was only 800–900 kilograms, which had dropped since the previous generations’ harvests of 1,000–1100 kilograms. Perhaps peasants of this area of Chiapas have taken a few of the steps along the agroindustrial gradient to stage 3 or 4 Ag, and while they are still mostly described as traditional peasants, they are now using some artificial fertilizers and/or improved seed varieties and thus reaping considerably larger harvests. In 1964, San Juan Chamula peasants were using a fallow period of five or six years in their swidden system (shifting cultivation) compared to a fallow period of nine or ten years a generation earlier. In 1950, the population density of the municipio (district) was 275/km2 , whereas by 1960 it had reached 320, forcing the shortening of the fallow period. The data that Altieri and Toledo provide are very interesting and useful, but the yield data are presented without providing a holistic view of each particular community. Even in 1964, many if not most peasants in Chiapas were in reality already “worker peasants,” rather than purely peasants. Ideally, peasants prefer irrigation for their maize fields and pasture,

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but where little or no irrigation is practiced in more arid areas, slashand-burn milpas constitute the essential base of the local economy. In his classic study of the Chamula people, Ricardo Pozas (1959) described milpa agriculture in this society as based essentially on hoe culture, the almost exclusive use of human force for work, and the use of animal manure, especially sheep dung, for fertilizer. On very small parcelas, primary crops of maize and beans are interplanted with secondary crops of potatoes, squash, lima beans, and other legumes that also form part of the milpa complex. Milpas’ contribution to the peasants’ food security is said to represent much more than the calories it generates. It also provides a near guarantee that a family’s basic maintenance needs will be met (Altieri and Hecht 1990, p 596). In 1964, there were, however, a good number of communities that lacked sufficient land, but had developed an additional source of income. Some, such as Amatenango del Valle, a Maya Indian community in the Chiapas Highlands of Mexico, produced corn, beans, and squash in the milpa, wheat in the fields, and garden crops in the house gardens. Their technology has developed somewhat from the classic traditional pattern of Pozas (1962): they used an ox-drawn plow, machete, digging stick, sickle, and net bag. But the local economy was mainly focused on potterymaking. This was a woman’s job, and of 280 households in the town, only two or three were not engaged in making pots. The pots were sold to Indians and mestizos, chiefly in two or three towns. While the income earned from pottery undoubtedly helped to make ends meet, a series of leveling mechanisms operated in the community that prevented people making more money, playing down the social importance of economic success (Nash 1966). In densely settled San Juan Chamula, an annual visit of three months to work in the coffee fincas near Tapachula was usual, while other men engaged in wage labor for up to six months of the year in the “dead season” of the crop cycle. Income is also gained in many communities by the sale of fruit, vegetables, flowers, eggs, poultry, wool, firewood (often about 90 pesos per month then), charcoal (40–90 cargetas, worth 7–8 pesos each), and a little sale of pine needles to spread on the floor. Only about half the community’s maize requirement was then grown locally. In sum, a variety of other forms of income supplement the value of food grown locally (Watters 1973, p 180). Ideally, the agricultural-production data of peasants in Mexico should be seen in the context of all other sources of income that each peasant

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community receives. Of course, even in 1964 and earlier, a considerable number of men and some women had migrated to the US, and whether they were legal or illegal residents, they were remitting considerable sums back to their relatives in Mexico. Even then, peasant agriculture received this additional external boost to income.

Peasant Agriculture and Climate Change It is encouraging to note that peasant farmers are so aware of the threat of major climate events that they cope with and even prepare for climate change, minimizing crop failure through increased use of droughttolerant local varieties, water harvesting, mixed cropping, agroforestry, soil-conservation practices, and various other traditional techniques. A survey after Hurricane Mitch showed that farmers using diversification practices, such as cover crops, intercropping, and agroforestry, suffered less damage than conventional monoculture farms nearby. Also, in Soconusco, Chiapas, coffee systems with high levels of vegetational complexity and plant diversity suffered less damage from Hurricane Stan than more simplified coffee systems (Watters 1973, p 597). These systems of Neolithic legacy display an ingenious approach to living on the land, adapting and adjusting to the vagaries of a changing physical and material environment, yet modernization threatens the sustainability of this inheritance.

The Campesino a Campesino Movement We have already described the value and potential of the Campesino a Campesino (CAC) movement in some areas of Latin America. This is a dynamic peasant-driven movement of technological innovation that has become a worldwide movement in which peasants and small farmers across the globe learn from the experiences of other peasants in other countries and environments and build on their own knowledge base. It began in the late 1980s in the highlands of Guatemala when Kaqchikel farmers visited Mexican farmers in Tlaxcala (Guerrero state), where they had set up a school of soil and water conservation. The Guatemalans used parables, stories, and humor to describe their agricultural improvements to their Mexican compadres, describing their love of farming, family, nature, and community. They saw themselves as students of the Mexicans’ deep lifelong knowledge of their own land and climate. The Mexicans in

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their turn also shared their new knowledge. This friendly exchange and sharing of knowledge was typical of the grassroots movement CAC which has steadily grown in southern Mexico and war-torn Central America over the last four decades (Holt Giménez 2006). A key element in the CAC methodology is the role of the campesino promoter: a fellow farmer who successfully uses particular alternatives on their own farm and can thus train and encourage other farmers based on their own experience. This “peasant pedagogy,” as Holt Giménez terms it, is widely diffused over large areas and has proved itself as a methodology for promoting agroecological farming practices. Since the CAC method was diffused, hillside farmers adopting the various techniques tripled or quadrupled their yields from 400 kilograms per hectare to 1,200–1,600 kilograms. The tripling in grain production per hectare has ensured that the 1,200 families that joined the program have ample grain supplies for the next year. Planting velvet beans (Mucuna pruriens ), which can fix up to 150 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare and produce 35 tons of organic matter per year, had the effect of tripling maize yields to 2,500 kilograms per hectare. Moreover, labor requirements for weeding were cut by 75% and herbicides completely eliminated. The use of village extension workers was not only more efficient and less costly than using professional extension workers but it also helped to build local capacity, confidence, and belief in themselves and provide crucial leadership experience. The CAC movement is proving itself a success story, and despite occasional setbacks, it is a snowballing process of growth and steadily improving performance, supporting the lives and especially the livelihoods and food security of tens of thousands of peasants and small farmers in Mexico, Latin America, and the world. On the eve of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, 2% of the rural population controlled 65% of the land. Dismantling about 11,000 large latifundios and haciendas in the first agrarian reform on the continent took about six decades. Today, the so-called social property sector includes over 100 million hectares distributed to two kinds of owners: ejido peasant-family nuclei and comunidades, which are primarily old indigenous communities that have been reestablished and recognized. In both cases, property is seen to be of a social nature, with rules of access, possession, and transmission based on the community and equitable use of land. These conditions have continued to prevail, despite the sweeping counteragrarian reforms implemented by President C Salinas de

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Gortari in 1992 aimed at privatizing social property and making it available to private enterprise. This was an enormous setback to the peasants and Indian communities, leading (along with other things) to the new Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. The last agrarian census of 1991 showed that there were about 4.58 million rural-property owners in Mexico: 66% of these were peasant families that controlled 103 million hectares, and 30% were private owners who had about 70 million hectares. The other main aspects are cultural and historical, since Mexico and Mesoamerica gave birth to some of the most ancient and brilliant civilizations. About 12% of the 123 million population of Mexico today are indigenous people spread over 26 regions, occupying most of the habitats of the country. The peasant sector that still uses indigenous languages controls about 28 million hectares. In this southern Mexican region and neighboring areas, where the domestication of maize and about 100 other plant species took place over several thousand years, a number of cultures blossomed. The most biologically rich areas of selvas (hot, wet tropical forests) and forests and the great majority of traditional agriculture with its unique germplasm are located in southern Mexico, especially Chiapas and Oaxaca states. More than 7,000 ejidos possess 70–80% of the forests and selvas. Along with China and New Guinea, Mexico is the country with the highest percentage of forest and selvas under community guardianship and management (Altieri and Toledo 2011, p 604). The Lacandón forest is the last remaining extensive selva. There have been many ecological reforestation projects in southern Mexico, since these peasant and indigenous areas contain the main sources of genetic resources, biodiversity, and water resources in the country. Despite its enormous loss of lives, the Mexican Revolution of 1910 did achieve several immense advances, including the two noted by Altieri and Toledo: the re-peasantization of rural society through dismantling the latifundia, and the rescue and reinvention of the Mesoamerican matrix in southern Mexico and nearby countries to the south. Indigenous people thus at last received their reward in gaining access to land through recognition of their ancestral territories. As such, descendants of social groups that interacted with natural resources some 9,000 years ago to create brilliant cultures eventually received social justice. Agroecological activities in Mexico are not confined to agriculture, but also include nature-resource management, forest management, the restoration of degraded lands, and conservation. Over the last 30 years,

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many communities have recovered control of their forestlands and engaged in ecological production of a variety of timber and nontimber products. The Forest Stewardship Council has certified the programs of about 550 communities and ejidos as part of those of the Unión Nacional de Organizaciones en Forestería Comunitaria (UNOFOC). In the Mixteca region of Oaxaca state about 30 years ago, some indigenous nongovernmental organizations, such as the Centro de Desarrollo Integral Campesino de la Mixteca (CEDICAM), began to restore watersheds through reforestation, soil and water conservation, and crop diversification. Large areas have been reforested, and the building of contour ditches on hillsides above threatened springs and shallow wells has recharged the aquifers. It is estimated that 1 lineal meter 60 cm deep by 60 cm wide captures up to 360liters of water from one rainfall event. A long 100-meter ditch can thus potentially capture 36,000 liters. Worldwide, Mexico occupies fifth place in coffee production. Most coffee production is done by 200,000 smallholding farmers who occupy about 770,000 hectares. Most are indigenous people who belong to about 28 ethnic groups. These producers not only maintain complex coffee agroforests but in addition manage a great number of useful species, in great contrast to industrial open-sun coffee plantations subsidized by agrochemicals, which are prone to soil erosion. Mexico is the leading country in the world in producing certified organic coffee. About 300,000 hectares are under multistrata “coffee gardens,” of which 80% or more are certified organic. A key strategy used by Mayan farmers was to produce organic coffee as a means of confronting the government for withdrawing regulation of the coffee sector and implementing neoliberal reforms in the 1970s, 1980s, and later in the 1990s to deal with the dramatic drop in prices. They thus gained a price premium from northern markets. Coffee growers also achieve greater security by integration at the local, regional, national, and international levels, which coordinates links with markets, helps in bargaining for fair prices, and protects them from challenges involved in entering the industrial and agroexport chains. The growers in Oaxaca belong to a local cooperative and in turn a state, national, and finally global coffee organization—La Via Campesina.

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The Return of the Peasants Peasantry is not dying but expanding and growing in confidence. It has been conventional wisdom that peasantry is disappearing in the face of modernization, industrialization, and urbanization (Chayanov 1966; De Janvry 1981; Bryceson 2000), though in fact Mexican and other Latin American campesinos have increased their numbers and also their cultural, social, and political influence in the region in recent years. An evaluation of data from 17 countries has shown that smallholding farmers increased by 220 million between 1990 and 1999 (Altieri and Toledo 2011, p 606). This development has been termed “the return of the peasants” or the “re-peasantization” of rural spaces, including in European territories. It seems likely that this is occurring mainly in relatively isolated, poorer, or more mountainous regions (often regions of refuge) that are less attractive to more modern large-scale agricultural enterprises. Nevertheless, their return has led to the recognition of the peasantry in its new role of resistance against the advance of industrial agriculture and neoliberal policies. A concrete expression of their reemergence is the founding of the new international peasant organization La Via Campesina, which works closely with and supports indigenous movements. La Via Campesina has always argued that farmers need land to produce food for their own communities, as well as countries, and thus has fought for genuine agrarian reforms that include access to and control over land, water, and biodiversity, among other things, which are of basic importance for communities being able to meet their growing food demands. La Via Campesina firmly believes that in order to protect livelihoods, jobs, people’s food security and health, and the environment, food production has to remain in the hands of small-scale sustainable farmers and cannot be left in the control of large agribusiness companies or supermarket chains. They assert that only by changing the export-led, free trade-based, industrial agricultural model of large farms can the downward spiral of poverty, low wages, rural–urban migration, hunger, and environmental degradation be halted. The comprehensive arguments and evidence presented by Altieri and Toledo are indeed persuasive. The retention of the peasantry is evidence of its resilience and the emerging leadership of La Via Campesina as an international force is encouraging for the poor rural masses in Mexico, Latin America, and probably in other developing countries of the world.

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References Altieri MA. Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture. Boulder, CO: Westview Press; 1995. Altieri MA. Applying agroecology to enhance the productivity of peasant farming systems in Latin America. Environment, Development, and Sustainability. 1999;1(3–4):197–217. Altieri MA, Hecht SB. Agroecology and Small Farm Development. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press; 1990. Altieri MA, Toledo VM. The agroecological revolution in Latin America: Rescuing nature, ensuring food sovereignty and empowering peasants. Journal of Peasant Studies. 2011;38(3):587–612. Beets WC. Multiple Cropping and Tropical Farming Systems. Boulder, CO: Westview Press; 1982. Boeke JH. Economics and Economic Policy of Dual Societies, as Exemplified by Indonesia. New York: International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations; 1953. Bryceson D. Disappearing Peasantries? London: Intermediate Technology; 2000. Chayanov AV. On the theory of non-capitalist economic systems. In: Halperin R, Dow J (editors). Peasant Livelihood: Studies in Economic Anthropology and Cultural Ecology (pp 56–67). New York: St Martin’s Press; 1966. De Janvry A. The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; 1981. Desmarais AA. La Vía Campesina: La Globalización y el Poder del Campesinado. Madrid: Editorial Popular; 2007. ETC Group. With climate chaos … who will feed us? The industrial food chain/the peasant food web. 2009. Available at: https://www.etcgroup.org/ files/030913_ETC_WhoWillFeed_AnnotatedPoster_0.pdf. Accessed August 25, 2020. Furness H. Eat Aztec pigweed instead of rice, urges new ancient foods project launched by Prince Charles. Telegraph. 2017. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/05/eat-aztec-pigweed-ins tead-rice-says-prince-charles-launches. Accessed August 25, 2020. Hari J. How Goldman gambled on starvation. The Independent. 2010. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/ johann-hari-how-goldman-gambled-on-starvation-2016088.html. Accessed August 25, 2020. Holt Giménez E, Patel R. Food Rebellions: The Real Story of the World Food Crisis and What We Can Do about It. Oxford: Fahumu Books; 2009. Holt Giménez E. Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture. Oakland: Food First; 2006. Kaufman F. The food bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it. Harper’s Magazine. 2010; July:27–34.

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Nash M. Primitive and Peasant Economic Systems. San Francisco: Chandler; 1966. Pozas R. Chamula: Un Pueblo Indio de los Altos de Chiapas. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista; 1959. Pozas R. Juán the Chamula: The Ethnological Reconstruction of the Life of a Mexican Indian. Berkeley: University of California; 1962. Rosset P. Food sovereignty in Latin America: Confronting the “new” crisis. NACLA Report on the Americas. 2009;42(3):16–21. Rosset P. The multiple functions and benefits of small farm agriculture. Development. 2000;43(2):77–82. Vidal J. (2011). Food speculation: ‘People die from hunger while banks make a killing on food’. The Observer. Watters RF. The nature of shifting cultivation. Pacific View Point. 1960;1(1):59– 99. Watters RF. Shifting Cultivation in Mexico. Rome: FAO; 1973. Wild Australian rice may help in feeding the world. January 27, 2018. Dominion Post, Wellington. Wilken GC. Good Farmers: Traditional Agricultural Resource Management in Mexico and Central America. Berkeley: University of California Press; 1990.

PART II

Mexico

CHAPTER 4

Southern Mexico: Revolution, Agrarian Reform, and Rural Development

Mexico is a huge country of 1,972,547 km2 —equal in size to Britain, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy combined—with a population of 126.2 million in 2018 (Fig. 4.1). It was only when I began work there in 1963 that I started to learn how vast it is. Like many others, I knew little about the country until I encountered it myself. I was shocked when I traveled in stages with my wife and two small daughters on a third-class bus from Mexico City to Mérida in the Yucatán to realize that the fascinating but arduous journey of several days was almost as far as from London to Moscow. It has been argued that Mexico defies definition. It is a place of extremes, heterogeneous rather than homogeneous, and although it is a single country, it seems to be a combination of many different places. These differences are environmental, geographical, biological, historical, ethnic, and cultural. Lesley Byrd Simpson chose an apt title for his book Many Mexicos (1941). The country has every environment imaginable; from snowcapped volcanoes and mountain ranges to alpine meadows, lakes, rainforests, mangrove swamps, and deserts. Going from the coast to the central Sierras, one climbs through many different climatic zones and ecosystems and encounters a wide array of cultures. It is also a country of “megadiversity,” containing over 200,000 species holding 10 of the worlds 12% biodiversity (Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs 2013). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Watters, Rural Latin America in Transition, Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65033-9_4

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Fig. 4.1 Mexico map

Mexico has also experienced many different histories and historical turning points and suffered at the hands of repeated conquests (including those of the Aztecs, the Spanish, and American capitalism). Indios or Indian people comprise over a quarter of the national population. There are 56 distinct Indian peoples, with 13 of Mexico’s 31 states regarded as “eminently indigenous.” Ninety percent of all Mexicans are of mixed blood (Puig 2007). Over the last hundred years or so, Mexico has been trying to validate itself as has been illustrated by one of Mexico’s most outstanding novelists, Carlos Fuentes: Since Independence, Latin America has tried to legitimize itself by putting on the masks of European or Latin American progress because we are incapable of looking at ourselves in the mirror… and of realizing what we are: basically a multiracial and polycultural society that springs from the Indian world. The Americans don’t have a Middle Ages. We do. Our political vision of the world is informed by St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas more than by John Locke or Adam Smith. We come from the Renaissance, from the discovery of the new world. We come from the

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Baroque, our response to the Counter Reformation. We have always been hiding behind masks in Latin America, behind the masks of Rousseau, of Montesquieu, of Marx, even behind the mask of Milton Friedman, for God’s sake. The revolution tears away the masks. (Fuentes 1985)

Of all Latin American countries, Mexico is nearest to its giant neighbor, the US, on the other side of the Rio Grande. An oft-quoted quip attributed to the Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz in the early years of the twentieth century, was: “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.” Of course, the US has always exerted great influence on Mexico and other Latin American countries. As early as 1823, the American president warned the European powers off any colonization projects in the “American continents, which because of their free and independent condition” were not to be interfered with (except of course by the US). In 1848, the US illegally annexed half the country when it seized California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Colorado, Nevada, and Utah. America has also wielded enormous foreign ownership and control of the Mexican economy, especially since the 1950s. The relationship has always been that between a giant and a midget (despite Mexico’s very large area and population), and while America has very largely ignored its southern neighbor, except to reap the rewards of its investments, the relationship has greatly shaped the course of Mexican development. Among developing countries, Mexico is one of the most instructive nations to study if we wish to understand the difficulties and problems encountered in the journey towards progress: the modernization of Mexico from 1910 to today. Since Mexico has been both a prototype and pioneer, I always began my course on Latin America to university students by considering the Mexican case study. Around 1900, it exhibited the classic features of underdevelopment, as well as developmentalism: a semifeudal country in which it was believed 3% of the population owned 90% of the land, a stagnant country in which industrialization had barely begun, and an unequal country characterized by gross inequalities in wealth, ruled by a powerful dictator supported by a dominating upper caste who coexisted with a population of peasantry and peons who lived in abject poverty, lacking fundamental human rights or access to even the most basic education or health facilities. Mexico also possessed most of the great institutions and features of Hispanic conquest culture: the hacienda or latifundio (great estates) system, the all-pervasive Catholic Church demanding conformity, the

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strong presence of the army in society, and other institutions of control and administration of the populace. It also exhibited through the ruling classes the classic Spanish qualities of intense individualism—personalismo—and adulation for the individual adventurer, such as Columbus or Cortés. Salvador de Madariaga has argued that anarchy is the natural state of the Spaniard, for since a man is what he makes of himself, he has no debt to pay to society. It is difficult, therefore, to submit to the discipline of group action, and there is often an aversion to the operation of cooperatives or even large-scale economic enterprise. Every man tends to be his own private political party, since political issues are often reduced to personalities. Personalism is the rule and government an affair of men, with their concepts of pride and honor, rather than of laws and principles. Since the 1980s, the influences of Westernization have considerably weakened such classic Spanish stereotypes; they have nevertheless played a considerable role. In general, in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon tradition, there was little effort to find a middle way. However, in spite of the smothering dead hand of its semifeudal colonial past, Mexico undertook a major revolution involving among many things, such as a sweeping land reform, a redefinition of the role of the state in the economy, strict limitations on the powers of the Catholic Church, and new opportunities for the struggling masses to find or forge a freer and better way of life. Many mistakes were made, and widespread corruption and the ruthless power plays of competing factions often aborted worthy policies, but the Mexican road to progress was both an exciting experience and a salutary lesson to other developing countries. Most of the large peasant populations are to be found in southern Mexico (Fig. 4.2).

The Mexican Revolution Background to Change When I arrived in Mexico in 1963, I was immediately engulfed in the rhetoric and symbols of the revolution: the powerful images of the country’s violent past and its tortuous progress towards the modern world. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the regime of Porfirio Díaz (“Porfiriato,” 1876–1910) had become the prototype of the “ancient regime” for Latin America as a whole. The age of Díaz brought in the more modern world, laying the foundation for present advantages, but at social and political cost that was so high that it eventually led to revolt. Under Díaz’s dictatorship, a positivist ruling philosophy was

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Fig. 4.2 Map of southern Mexico

espoused, based on the ideas of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, which had arisen in the historical context of an increasingly democratic bourgeoisie and intellectual freedom that characterized industrial development in Britain. When transposed to a traditional economy—one without democratic freedoms—positivism can be seen to be an alien creed. As

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Octavio Paz says in his Labyrinth of Solitude (1961), often described as the greatest book on Mexico: The [Spanish] Conquest destroyed temples but the colonial world built others. The [Benito Juárez] Reform of 1857 denied tradition but offered us a universal image of man. Positivism gave us nothing at all. Instead it revealed the principles of liberalism in all their nakedness, as lovely but inapplicable words. (Paz 1961, p 133)

What were the policies of positivism in Mexico promoted by the científicos , those who espoused positivism? It was believed that to progress, Mexico must be peaceful: politics must decrease, administration increase. It was important to lay the foundation and infrastructure for the country’s economic base: railways, roads, a mining industry, and agriculture for export had to be established, along with a stable economy and sound financial planning. While such steps helped to initiate development, they were taken in such a way and at such a pace that extensive foreign ownership and investment occurred. Moreover, peace was secured by the ruthless destruction of all local leaderships as a centralized tyranny emerged (it was said that bandits were either exterminated or dressed in official uniforms). Federalism became an empty concept as state governors became lifelong lackeys of the president. The legislature was packed with friends of the oligarchy, the press muffled, and the Catholic Church given freedom in return for being politically quiescent. Internal peace and stability, a balanced budget, and good credit standing abroad encouraged development and incipient industrialization. A great part of the land of Mexico found its way into foreign hands as giant latifundio or plantations were bought (a third of Mexico went to large companies; Glade and Anderson 1963). All mining and manufacturing enterprises, and much of the commerce and the oil industry, passed into foreign possession. Order was ensured by the Rurales, an elite corps of mounted police. Recalcitrant Indians and political nonconformists were shipped to tropical frontier regions, such as Quintana Roo or Valle Nacional, areas where I undertook fieldwork. Large companies were permitted to strip communal lands from villages and to preserve or extend peonage.

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Much that was needed for the emergence of a more modern state was at least partly established. Mexican científicos copied French architecture in building Mexico City and laying out great avenidas like French boulevards, but in aping French culture they disparaged local traditions as primitive. Policy justified a theory of progress that declared the Indian retrogressive and required his elimination to make room for European and American immigrants, who were seen as the innovators and entrepreneurs the country needed.1 The good economic achievements were consequently won at great social, political, and national cost. As the regime of Porfirio Diaz consolidated over a 30 year period, it became more oppressive, and people complained increasingly that the same narrow circle of aging men ran the country on ideas that had by the first decade of the twentieth century outlasted their historical usefulness—the “full car” (carro completo), the loaded bus in which no room remained for new faces or suggestions. As Howard Cline noted, beneath the façade of democracy and the 1857 Constitution: … the Mexican Establishment — a handful of mummified generals, faithful dynasties of state governors, a group of the hated local “political chiefs,” scholars cleaving to the “official” lines, a bought and muted press — continued to give the impression that Díaz was immortal and that all was well”. (Cline 1962; DeWalt 1994)

The system was inevitably undermined by irresponsible power, arbitrarily wielded. By the end of the nineteenth century, Mexico was fractured by discord and disintegration. Juridical and cultural forms had been imposed that not only did not express Mexico’s true nature but, in Paz’s words, “actually smothered and immobilised it” (Paz 1961). The upper class had become a caste that was incapable of becoming a genuine class—mobile and changeable. National life was poisoned by lies and sterility. Dialogue with the US had become impossible, for the latter was now a country that spoke to Mexico “only in the language of force or business” (Paz 1961). Mexico was imprisoned in a rigid Catholicism or in the closed and hopeless universe of the official philosophy of the científicos that was based on the philosophy of the 1830s Manchester school (Raico 2004) and free-trade ideals of the West. In Paz’s view, “Mexico was

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reduced to a unilateral imitation of France, which had always ignored us. What was left to us? Asphyxiation and solitude” (Paz 1961, pp 133–134). However, industrialization was already creating an incipient Mexican capitalistic middle class, as well as a labor movement that would eventually develop into a working class, both of which demanded recognition and a political voice. There was a renewed sense of Mexican identity and a rejection of the dominance of the US over Latin America. “Ariel,” a vastly influential essay by the Uruguayan José Enrique Rodo, promulgated the idea in the first decade of the twentieth century that the only way to resist the domination of North America was to assert the genius of race, or more specifically the superior spirituality of Latin America (Franco 1967). While based to some degree on a simplistic notion of the differences between the two continents, the essay nevertheless had a positive influence in stressing the power of ideals and ideas in shaping societies. There was a growing appreciation of educational theory and reform and a much more palpable sense of Latin American nationalism. A lecture society that began in 1907, the Ateneo de la Juventud and later the Ateneo de México, discussed the ideas of Rodo and began to challenge positivism and explore the possibilities of a new Mexico. Several of its members became intellectual leaders in the later revolutionary period. The Revolution Unfolding As it evolved from 1910 onwards, the revolution2 had causes and motives that gave it popular authenticity, but at the same time it lacked a unifying ideology or set of goals. As different classes or factions emerged or became dominant, new demands were made, and the revolution responded pragmatically, alternating between left-wing and right-wing ideologies. First was the Madero revolution, which sought truth and honesty in government and fair elections. Led by the first revolutionary president, Madero, it was primarily politically motivated. The second phase placed its emphasis on land reform and a return to historical land ownership and distribution. It was characterized by hunger for land, by the “struggle for peace and bread” (Tannenbaum 2013), when the peasantry led by Emiliano Zapata demanded the restoration of their lands and the legal and social order that had been violated by their oppressors. As it played out, the revolution thus represented not so much an invitation to realize

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an idealized future, but—like most large-scale revolutions—an attempt to restore a golden age—the “eternal return.” The Zapatista movement wanted to rectify the nation’s history and return the country to its roots by calling for the bulk of the land of the great haciendas to be confiscated and distributed to the peasantry by way of ejidos , the new basic land unit, and social and economic structures of the agrarian reform that were modeled on calpulli, the ancient lineage or kin unit that had lived in one spot for as long as could be remembered. However, the Zapatista movement, like the later movement of the colorful freebooter Pancho Villa, was simply a popular explosion that proved largely incapable of bringing its egalitarian and reformist truths into being. It was succeeded in turn by the constitutionalist movement of Carranza and the 1917 Constitution, while Zapata was assassinated, like the earlier unfortunate Madero. Although the Constitution achieved many important legal and constitutional gains, the Mexican intelligentsia were quite incapable of formulating the aspirations of the people in a coherent system. The instinctive acts, the “stammering expressions of the revolutionary will” (Paz 1961) required a compromise in the 1917 Constitution. Since it was impossible to return to the pre-Cortésian era or the colonial tradition, the revolution had no other alternative but to take over the liberal program with some modifications. The heavily stratified class structure probably made it inevitable that the Mexican Revolution would become primarily a bourgeois affair. The middle class, created by the beginnings of industrialization prior to 1910, was too powerful and influential to lose control. After years of popular explosion and the counterrevolutionary revolts of Orozco, Felix Díaz (nephew of Porfirio Díaz), and Huerta and later conflict between the new centralism of the center and northern alliances, the nation became sickened by widespread bloodshed and disorder (as many as 1.5–2 million people, or one in eight Mexicans, died in the revolution.) As the northern leader, Alvaro Obregón became dominant after 1920 and then became president, and the more successful factions coalesced into what was later named the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in 1929, the need for stability became paramount. The nascent working class was as restless as the middle class, but liberal legislation provided no protection against the powerful factory owners. While the peasants, accustomed to a long tradition of struggle, persisted with their campaign, the workers, whose strikes were prevented by the labor movement Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM) and

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mercilessly put down, lacked the experience for long civil protest. Eventually, their leaders were bought off, and they soon formed only a faction of the revolutionary movement. They were co-opted more or less completely by the PRI, on whom they remained totally dependent for many decades, and were offered social benefits in exchange for political loyalty. However, despite peasant leagues, trade unions, and political parties still being dependent on caciques (bosses), caudillos (populist leaders), and relations of patronage, political participation enlarged substantially, with the state becoming more inclusive and political stability and national integration being achieved to some extent. Under the PRI, the revolution was “institutionalized,” a peculiarly Mexican concept used to explain how the ideals of revolution—democracy, liberalism, and free speech—actually exist within the formalized structures of government. While these and other goals of the revolution have entered into the policies and programs of various Mexican governments since 1910, it is often difficult to discern what is genuine policy compared to the manipulation of popular myths for political advantage. Since many of the countries of Hispanic America have been among the most repressed in the world in the twentieth century, it is good politics in Mexico to affirm that the revolution is still alive and well (Ross 1966). Few Mexicans, however, would have believed this, especially after the murder of at least 200 protesting students occurred at the same time, but not at the same venue, as the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. The Revolution and Development While some development probably would have occurred even if there had been no revolution, it can be argued that the revolution not only stimulated and promoted development (Glade and Anderson 1963) but also channeled it, at least over certain periods, in promising directions. One of the most important characteristics of the revolution was that it assigned to the state the responsibility for national well-being. The government pioneered interventionist techniques and paved the way for a mixed economy to develop. A bill of rights guaranteed individual liberties. Limitations were placed on rights of property that were seen in the context of social function, a step that paved the way for agrarian reform and the creation of ejidos. The state nurtured and controlled the labor movement. The wide role of the Catholic Church in society was restricted by assigning responsibility for education to the state. One of the world’s

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first great campaigns for literacy was carried out. Deliberate industrialization was attempted through import-substitution policies. A healthy consequence of the growth of industry was the emergence in the 1930s of the New Group, a dynamic set of entrepreneurs who appeared as a result of the interaction between the state and the private sector (Cline 1962). The maquiladoras of today appear to be modern offshoots of this group. The economic growth of Mexico was very impressive for the first three decades of the revolution, especially when we consider that almost no foreign investment occurred. There had been few economic-theory guidelines since 1910, so the country had to resort to “bootstrap development.” A steady modernization of attitudes and skills occurred, and of course there was a diffusion of American influence southward across the border. The president Lázaro Cárdenas expropriated all foreign oil wells and installations in 1938 with a law that proclaimed that all mineral and oil reserves should belong to Mexico, an event of great significance in the emergence of Mexico as a more modern sovereign nation. In the 1940s, the governments of Camacho and Alemán adopted right-wing policies and opened up the country increasingly to foreign investment. As the revolution matured, an alliance grew between the middle class and the bureaucracy, favoring the industrial and commercial sectors. After 1950, while the economic gains made by the country as a whole were most impressive, only a small proportion of the population benefited greatly. Moreover, population rates began to rise rapidly, reaching the alarmingly high growth rate of 3.5% in 1974. Huge investment was thus needed in human resources, including education and health. Increasingly, income gains went to the wealthy and the middle classes and only small gains to the peasantry and workers. Accompanying widening income and class inequality were growing regional economic disparities, with Mexico City and some prosperous central and northern states becoming relatively affluent and many areas in southern Mexico and especially states like Oaxaca and Chiapas (predominantly Indian in population) becoming the poorest.

Agrarian Reform Beginning in 1911, the struggle for land was a major theme of the Mexican Revolution. The key focus for Zapata and the countless peasants who followed him was the seizure of great haciendas and the hope

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that this would lead to massive land redistribution. This was of course the first and primary objective of land reform and its most obvious outcome, but redistribution of land also implies a redistribution of power. As will be seen, such a redistribution was less clearly apparent. The greatest moment for the peasantry came in the 1930s, when agrarian reform was initiated in the presidency of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934– 1940). Large areas of haciendas were expropriated and 16 million hectares distributed as ejidos to the peasants. A leftist populist, Cárdenas became the country’s most loved president. A left-leaning, propeasant lobby did not however dominate in the PRI again until the presidency of López Mateos from 1958–1964: he distributed 10 million hectares (Flores 1970). Since only a little over 10% of the total national area of 200 million hectares was judged to be arable, with most of the rest grazing land, a major goal of the five decades after the beginning of the revolution in 1910 was to expand the agricultural frontier by opening new lands. With the bulk of the population living in the densely settled temperate central sierras and valleys, the growth of Mexico saw an outward migration towards the hot wet tropics in the south and southeast. As these migrants were moving into unfamiliar, different environments, the process of settlement was often destructive, especially on sloping land and thin fragile soils that required careful bush fallowing or in landlocked basins that frequently suffered from aridity. In consequence, widespread massive erosion has occurred in many areas, an alarming process that was highlighted by William Vogt in his 1948 book Road to Survival. The statistics of land redistribution itself appear positive. Before the land reform, there were 8,400 very large haciendas and 48,600 mediumsized and small plots, making a total of 57,000 properties. From 1915 to 1963, 44 million hectares of all types of land (more than 50% of all productive land) was distributed among 2 million peasants (Flores 1970). The Mexican land reform also created small family farms called pequeñas propiedades, modeled on the American family farm. Their area varied from 100 to 150 hectares of irrigated land or a (larger) equivalent in lower-quality land. These farms were created from lands exempt from expropriation when ejidos were formed. In 1962 there were approximately 40,000 pequeñas propiedades with an average size of 100–250 hectares that covered an area of about 7 million hectares of the best land. There were also over a million smaller privately owned holdings, and there remained about 500 haciendas

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of 50,000–100,000 hectares, mostly in remote semidesert or tropical jungles. Some, however, were owned by powerful politicians (Flores 1970). The transformation of land ownership was thus most dramatic. In place of a total of 57,000 properties in 1910, half the productive land went to 2 million ejidatarios and the other half to about 1.4 million private farmers. This change of ownership, set in the social context of the revolution, did indeed have a galvanizing effect, increasing productivity, diversifying production, and stimulating industrialization. From 1930 to 1960, agricultural products increased at an average annual rate of 5.4%, while GNP grew at the very high rate of 6.2% annually. Cotton production increased 17-fold, coffee and beans eightfold, tomatoes and wheat fourfold, and sugarcane 2.5-fold. The core peasant subsistence crop of maize significantly grew at a slower rate, doubling in size (Flores 1970). The acreage harvested grew from 6.2 million hectares in 1946 to 10.5 million in 1977. Apart from land reform, the main engine of the growth process was population increase. In the period 1940–1960, the population rose by 75% and total agricultural production by 300%. The area harvested increased by 100%, while yield per hectare grew by 50% (Lincklaen Arriens 1962). Cárdenas believed that the ejido should be a fundamental part of the national economy, and by the time of my fieldwork in 1963, about 50% of all arable land was in ejidos , much of it in the tropics. The Mexican ejido is a peasant community that received a grant of land, usually expropriated from a hacienda, in accordance with article 27 of the 1917 Constitution. Apart from a small number of collectives, ejidos were divided into small private farms (usually minifundio or scattered parcelas totaling only a few hectares) that were cropped by individual households. The whole ejido was owned communally, which prevented individual portions from being sold or mortgaged. By about 1960, however, it was becoming apparent that the ejido sector, roughly half the whole farming sector by area, was contributing a good deal less than 50% of total agricultural production. Some reasons for this were obvious. When haciendas were expropriated, owners were allowed to retain the maximum area allowed by law, and of course they retained the best land. Ejido land was consequently usually poorer or hillier than private agricultural land, and ejidatarios had more thirdclass than first-class land compared to private farmers. Also, they had less

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education, more reliance on family labor, more unemployment, less irrigation (45% compared to 55%), and less capital. Since the late 1950s, they had held much less land per head (3.8 hectares) than private farmers (16.5 hectares, González Santos 1957) and were less likely to be able to employ new technology, such as tractors, that might enable deep disking of heavy soils. Overwhelmingly, ejidatarios were peasants rather than farmers. A further critical difference between the ejido and the private agricultural sector was related to access to credit. The Ejido Bank was the only bank available to ejidatarios, and it was small and had less capital than many of the other banks. In consequence, only 25% of ejidatarios received loans from the bank, whereas over 70% of private farmers were able to secure bank credit (Gutierrez Olgin 1962, p 389). Two goals were becoming harder to achieve: the twin problems of finding a balance between feeding the nation and exporting a surplus, and providing employment for the rural labor force. On one hand, the supply of new, uncropped land was beginning to run out (or required large sums of investment capital to become productive) and the reformed or ejido sector was not producing enough. Slowly, it was realized that the nation needed to move from simple land or agrarian reform (i.e., a redistribution of land) to agronomic reform, to use Doreen Warriner’s terminology (Warriner 1955, pp 280–290). Agronomic reform implies the use of supervised credit to achieve better irrigation, better technology, better fertilization of the soil, better weed and insect control, and better seed or animal selection, which are all part and parcel of an integrated set of inputs. As such, in the campaign to elect the PRI candidate Díaz Ordaz to the presidency in the early 1960s (1964), a prominent slogan was: “Si no es integral, no es reforma agraria” (if it isn’t integrated, it isn’t [real] agrarian reform). The demographic problem has been a significant factor in the history of a more modern Mexico. It is interesting to note, as Warriner has pointed out, that the first two countries of the 20 in Latin America to undertake land redistribution were Mexico and Bolivia, following revolutions in 1910 and 1950, respectively. Both countries were densely populated in relation to land resources. It is pertinent to ask how population growth affects the need for land reform and how land reform mitigates the effects of overpopulation. In Mexico (and Bolivia) before this agrarian reform, only a tiny proportion of the population owned the bulk of the productive land. Therefore, a similarly large proportion of agricultural income accrued to a very small proportion of the total population. This high

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concentration of land ownership and agricultural income that is common in many other Latin American countries partly explains the failure to achieve development. In spite of its economic inadequacies, the ejido system was a social success in that it marked a step up from a servile life working on a hacienda. Although still relatively poor, the peasantry jealously prized its independence. Many beneficiaries of land reform became the new conservatives once they gained land, as André Gunder Frank (1963) observed, to the extent that their class needs had been at least partially met and they ceased to actively promote the continuation of the revolution. It remains a question, however, whether their access to land gave them access to power (Photo 4.1).

Photo 4.1 A Highland Maya family of Tsotsil language visiting their local market

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Reform and the Peasantry In my fieldwork, I studied the agricultural performance of many scores of ejidatarios (Watters 1971). Although the Mexican Revolution was over well before 1963 in the view of most observers, I noted its effects in several of the villages in which I worked. Firstly, in Valle Nacional, one old campesino (peasant) spoke proudly of the days when he rode in support of the almost-legendary Pancho Villa. Secondly, in a rather remote community in Oaxaca, middle-aged men spoke of how in the evenings, when they had returned from their milpas (small agricultural plots), they would go to the village school and sit at the desks of the pupils. The village schoolmaster would come back in a voluntary capacity to teach them how to read and write. They spoke with pride of his and their efforts: perhaps in these small ways, the revolution lived on. Thirdly, I was impressed by the work and achievements of the Papaloapan Commission, a semiautonomous body that after 1947 set up an extensive system of river control on the Papaloapan River (running through the states of Veracruz and a part of Oaxaca), primarily to prevent catastrophic floods, and that gradually developed into an integral regional development authority, modeled to some extent on the Tennessee Valley Authority (Poleman 1964). The whole scheme centered on the building of a very large dam built by Mexican engineers, who showed it to me and talked proudly of their achievement. It was made without the help of any American or foreign expertise. Programs of irrigation, drainage, sanitation, and the development of hydroelectric power, communications, agriculture, industry, and education were undertaken with conspicuous success. Much of the landscape was transformed, with major increases in production and numerous social improvements being achieved. This pioneering method of integral regional development was repeated in the 1960s by the Grijalva Commission in Chiapas and Tabasco (Watters 1973). The final assessment of the balance sheet of the Mexican Revolution should be given to a Mexican peasant, Pedro Martínez, in the classic study of a peasant and his family from the 1890s to the early 1960s by Oscar Lewis. While Pedro and his family had benefited from improved availability of education, increased participation in community life, and greater choices in religion, friendships, and personal identity, he remained, as Lewis says, “first and foremost a peasant” (Lewis 1964). This should

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not surprise us, because Pedro was raised as a peasant and the strong constraints of poverty, deprivation, and very limited education shaped him. As Daniel Lerner, in his classic The Passing of Traditional Society (1958), reminds us: the traditional peasant accepts—he does not have an opinion. He lacks the empathy or psychic mobility to conceive of new goals that then become unattainable. Although Pedro had moved somewhat from the traditional state, he was unable to absorb and meaningfully adopt many new ideas, relying instead on the simplistic slogans and catchwords of the revolution. When they did not lead to a better life, he was inevitably disappointed. Because of his class status as a peasant, he had little sympathy for the underlying middle-class values of mid-century, postrevolutionary Mexico: consumerism, a higher standard of living, and new status symbols. As the revolution turned in an increasingly conservative direction, he found himself on the losing side (Lewis 1964) (Photo 4.2).

Photo 4.2 An Indian peasant with his donkeys and mule pass a Roman Catholic church

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The Legacy of Revolution: The Emergence of a Modern Capitalist State The more than 50 years since my fieldwork in southern Mexico have in general seen trends that were apparent in the economic, environmental, demographic, policy, peasant, and ejido sectors become more pronounced, creating both greater prosperity and progress for the bulk of the population and a critical increase in stress and impoverishment for rural and peasant groups. The nation, which had relied on mining and agriculture, has become largely industrialized. Whereas at first, the emphasis was on the “Mexicanization” of industry and local control of companies engaged in mining, exploitation of forests, fishing, and transport, in later decades a vigorous private-enterprise sector has become predominant and economic growth has been a major objective. Foreign enterprise has been actively encouraged and government controls loosened in some sectors, such that a massive capitalist state has emerged in which over 70% of foreign investment is American. By 1960, Foreign Direct Investment from US reached over 80% falling to 60% in 1996 (Twomey 2001). As early as the mid-1960s, 1.5% of industrial establishments controlled about 77% of total capital and accounted for 75% of the total value of output. In the agricultural sector, most of the rich, commercial, irrigated land of the northern states dominated output in crops and cattle. By 1980, the top group of about 3% of landowners held 70% of the irrigated land and agricultural capital, while the lowest 50% of landowners provided only 3% of the total agricultural produce (García and Manuela 1991). Agricultural inequality in a more modern Mexico is particularly blatant, and indeed not greatly dissimilar to the situation prior to the revolution. Clearly, “trickle down” has not worked as a macroeconomic policy. As in some other developing countries, such as Brazil, import substitution has been the strategy employed to promote local industrialization. Its diffusion throughout the country has been restrained, however, by the concentrated capital accumulation and prolonged foreign technological dependence that exist. As the productivity of the sector grows, the gulf between this sector and the traditional economy (about 25% of farmers and approximately 10 million people chronically poor and malnourished) deepens and the structural interdependence between the two weakens. Over time, the increasing numbers of poor become inessential for the

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expanding affluence of the middle and upper classes. There is thus a convincing economic explanation for the evolution of what is sometimes termed a “bipolar” Mexico (Baer 1986), or more simply for the existence of “two Mexicos.” Of course, at the same time it can be explained through historical processes and in cultural terms.

Population Explosion Accompanying this period of steady industrialization, growing concentration of wealth, and greater regional and social inequalities was a mounting demographic challenge. Mexico’s population grew from 13.6 million in 1900 to 34 million in 1960. By 2014, it had more than tripled from the 1960 level to reach 118 million. In the 1970s, population growth reached the exceptionally high rate of 3.5%, placing much pressure on the government for the provision of basic services, such as education and health, and amenities, such as power and better housing. Many of the lightly settled hot wet zones of south and southeast Mexico were occupied by new in-migrants in the “Advance to the Sea” campaign of President Camacho, clearing the forests and establishing either subsistence crops on new shifting cultivation milpas or attempting the permanent production of cash crops. State intervention has created new population centers associated with petroleum extraction, large dams, mines, and industrial and tourist sites in the resource-frontier region (Mouroz 1980). As the availability of land diminished steadily, due to growing population pressure, the outstanding growth in crop production of 5.7% annually from 1940 to 1965 dropped to only 2.6% annually from 1965 to 1980. The one Latin American country that could boast in the mid1960s of being an exporter of basic foodstuffs became by the 1980s a net importer, a result primarily of the failure of cropland to expand. Improvements in land quality through irrigation became harder to achieve, with increases in per hectare yield growing at the same rate—2%—in both the 1940–1965 and 1965–1980 periods (Barkin 2002).

Agricultural Decline and the Neoliberal “Solution” Among the numerous critics of both the agricultural sector as a whole and the ejido producers in particular, the economist Paul Lamartine Yates stands out. In the 1970s, he made estimates of the growing agricultural

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predicament (most called it a crisis) that would emerge in the 1980s. He believed food production could be increased to an annual rate of 3% or 3.5%. With a population growth of 2.7% and increases in per capita consumption with rising national income, he predicted a demand growth of 4–5% annually. As such, he estimated that the gap between supply and demand would grow as the country’s dependence on food imports increased (Yates 1981). What would fill this critical gap? Yates admitted that the emerging petroleum sector might provide the answer and that a strategy of unbalanced economic growth that featured petroleum exports and food imports might not be unsatisfactory. However, he was aware that the rapid petroleum boom led to inflation, which inevitably increased the costs of production in farming, lowered farm profitability and made food exports less competitive overseas (Yates 1981). A trial run for Yates’s predictions had indeed been partly played out in the 1970s. At the beginning of that decade, the new president, Luis Echeverría, declared the land reform dead, but within two years, in the face of a mounting deficit of basic foodstuffs and escalating peasant mobilization, he embarked on the biggest program of land reform since Cárdenas. Indeed, Echeverría established the Secretaría de la Reforma Agraria, which was not dismantled until 2013. It was Calderón who declared it obsolete, and then with Peña Nieto’s structural reforms this secretariat finally disappeared). He also revitalized the state-credit system, but capitalist farmers became the greatest beneficiaries, while the peasants who were unable to become autonomous independent farmers through capital accumulation were maintained in a semiproletarian condition by the state subsidies. Peasant demand for land continued under the administration of López Portillo, who ruthlessly suppressed land invasions. Like his predecessor, he was forced to change his policy, introducing programs entitled Sistema Alimentario Mexicano aimed at encouraging production of basic foods to reduce dependence on food imports. Nevertheless, in 1979, for the first time production of the staples maize and beans fell, and by 1980–1981 food was expected to account for a third of all imports, costing US$3 billion (Barkin 2002). Although the goals of the Sistema Alimentario Mexicano were good (to increase farm prices, bring more land under cultivation, subsidize fertilizer and other imports, and set up a chain of government retail shops) and it had a budget of US$4 billion over 18 months, it suffered from the usual class bias in its supervision. The bureaucracy’s deep-seated

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distrust of the peasantry became apparent in the administration of the programs, which were to be controlled by the agriculture ministry and at least five other bodies. The experienced French agronomist René Dumont feared that the exclusion of peasants from decision-making would merely consolidate the unequal social relations that lay at the root of low agricultural productivity. It was ironic that on the 70th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, when huge neon effigies of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata presided over the celebrations, poverty in the countryside remained the most pressing problem. Nutritional studies showed that 35 million Mexicans consumed less than the minimum levels of 2,750 calories and 80 grams of protein a day (Roberts 1986).3 At the same time, huge deposits of oil were discovered, and by 1981, when 2.3 million barrels per day were produced, Mexico was the fourthlargest producer of petroleum products in the world, but the stimulus this gave to heavy government investment in construction, public works, social welfare, and subsidies created a new danger. When oil prices began to fall, the boom was followed by bust. Inflation reached 20–30% in the 1980s and foreign debt mounted rapidly from $4.5 billion in 1971 to almost $20 billion in 1976. In 1982, Mexico threatened to default on US$80 billion of foreign debt, initiating a major financial crisis. By 1987, inflation had reached 159% and the budget deficit had risen to more than 15% of GNP. Furthermore, the balance of the whole economy had been upset, the state-owned oil industry Pemex became a “state within a state” of enormous wealth, and its head rivaled in power the president of Mexico himself. The solution was seen by the incoming government of Miguel de la Madrid to be the adoption of neoliberal policies that involved government cutting new projects, privatizing state-owned enterprises, reducing subsidies, freezing federal employment, and doing away with thousands of jobs. Increased emphasis was placed on lowering the cost of labor and promoting the maquiladora (assembly plants) program of hundreds of small-scale manufacturing plants along the Mexican border using cheap Mexican labor and US capital investment by multinationals for reexport. People complained of being much worse off than they were in the 1970s. In 1987, de la Madrid nominated Carlos Salinas de Gortari as President. Although attempts were made for the first time to hold a fair election, the opposition alleged that the PRI had used unfair means to win the election. Salinas became the darling of US neoliberals for his draconian monetary and fiscal policies. By 1992, inflation had been brought

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down to 15%. The budget deficit was eliminated by cutting government spending from 30% of GNP to 20%. Tax rules were changed and enforcement toughened, with prominent tax cheaters sent to jail. The country’s economy was revitalized by stimulating exports, and Salinas championed free trade with the US. In this area, he achieved his greatest success with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among Canada, Mexico, and the US in 1994.4 However, Salinas did not match his economic success, achieved through tough measures, by reforms in the political or social areas.5 By far, his most radical and controversial action was the amendment of article 27 of the Constitution in 1991, which not only made it virtually impossible in the future for private land to be redistributed but also threatened the future existence of the ejido itself by opening the door to private sale of ejido land and the possibility of land being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. This radical move was applauded by many middle-class Mexicans and right-wing economists, such as Lamartine Yates. They pointed out that the ejido system was a success in the early 1930s when inefficient traditional haciendas were expropriated and land was released to Mexican peasants. By the 1970s and 1980s, however, large farms that could be expropriated were now capitalist, profitable institutions, and their division into smaller units often lowered yields. Yates criticized the climate of uncertainty facing private farmers, the fear of possible confiscation resulting from ambiguous laws and corrupt politicians, and the danger of invasion by landless peasants. The result of these conditions was a serious curtailment of long-term investment in private farms. Yates’s prescription for agriculture called for greater security of landholding, better titles, administration of land laws by courts, rather than by politicians, and increased ownership rights of ejidatarios (Yates 1981). While undoubtedly Yates’s approach was at least partially appropriate and Mexicans should pay more attention to efficiency, security, and profitability if they hope to arrest the decline of their agricultural sector, it remains purely an economic and essentially economistic approach that ignores the historical and cultural legacy of many Indio ejidatarios.

Agricultural Decline and the Ejido Sector The process of globalization has left the ejido and its traditional agricultural practices behind, with its population living with a deteriorating environment and experiencing a declining quality of life. Some technical changes have been implemented, including the use of electricity, chemical

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fertilizers, gas-powered pumps, tractors, trucks, and deep wells to supplement irregular irrigation water sources. Of course, there is wide variation in the availability of irrigation water, basic infrastructure, and other assets: almost a quarter of irrigated lands exist within two states in the North Pacific—Sonora and Sinaloa. Only two-thirds of ejido lands have electricity, under half have drinkable water, and only 20% have access by a paved road (Brown 1997). An obvious deficiency is the lack of capital to finance new techniques or equipment. For example, when a new irrigation system becomes available, there is often inadequate capital to bring the water to all ejidatarios ’ parcelas, a situation that often causes conflict in the community. Uneducated campesinos who cannot understand aspects of a new innovation or are unable to deal with technicians at an appropriate level are matched by impatient mestizo engineers or bureaucrats who often drop the innovation, which leads to disappointment or frustration. Over the decades, there have been many mixed and conflicting signals from government agencies. The out-migration of workers on a substantial scale seeking a secondary income can undercut or weaken modernization attempts or even dismantle an ejido. Crop choice is often inappropriate, e.g., preference for the traditional crop of sugar cane because of its easier cultivation, instead of the more profitable rice, tomatoes, or maize (Branton 1994; Miller 1994; DeWalt 1979). A fundamental cause of resistance to modernization or reluctance to accept new ideas stems of course from the fundamentally different objectives of peasant production and the peasant production unit. Since the peasant household is not a family firm in a capitalist sense and operates essentially to feed its family members, security and risk avoidance are more dominant concerns than making money. Therefore, while a new maize variety introduced under the Green Revolution will produce substantially higher harvests six or seven years out of ten, in three or four years it might fail almost completely in seasons of bad drought, frost, or flood. This risk is too high for many peasant households to adopt the superior variety or indeed some promising cash crop in the place of their hardy, reliable, but low-yielding traditional variety. Such fundamental factors as these are invariably overlooked in the policies of government-extension agencies. There are also both geographical and sociocultural barriers in Indian regions. The fact that the Indian extension problem is so formidable demands much greater effort and expenditure to overcome the barriers to change. The hilly lands remain the realm of Indian life, protected by communal organization and too remote or unwanted by the

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entrepreneurs of more modern commercial production. Obstacles to change in the 1960s are still prevalent today and include witchcraft, which may work against incipient entrepreneurial tendencies; lavish expenditure and “the purchasing of prestige’; the institutionalization of conspicuous consumption, which dictates that men holding public office must spend lavishly on ceremonial feasts and often end their term heavily in debt; and a closely knit social structure.6 In a village in Oaxaca that I visited with my family to observe the pot-making skills of Doña Rosa, I observed the effects of the “leveling mechanisms” that often operated in Indian communities. In spite of her fame, Doña Rosa lived in a simple peasant house with a mud floor, an old iron bedstead, and with no more possessions, other than a larger transistor radio, than other villagers. I bought a few of her superb mugs for only a few dollars each, even though she could have charged a vastly higher sum. If she had done so, she would have invoked the enmity of others, malicious gossip, and perhaps sorcery that would have lowered her to the democracy of poverty of the rest. In the 1960s, I wrote that it was important for the Instituto Nacional Indigenista and all governmental agencies working in Indian areas to avoid being cast in a paternalistic role like that of the old patrón (Watters 1973). Indian social attitudes too readily express a dependence on authority that often stifles entrepreneurial initiative. Governmental authorities were urged slowly but progressively to reduce certain economic functions (e.g., marketing) to enable the development of a sturdy self-reliance in economic affairs among Indian communities. The extensive land reform of the 1930s carried out by Cárdenas revealed a characteristic feature of the Mexican Revolution: the multiform interplay of pressure from below, with mechanisms of mobilization and control from above. This meant that while the peasantry benefited from broad agrarian reform under Cárdenas and was integrated into the corporate structure of the revolutionary party, it still retained its identity as the “peasant sector” and thus continued to be subject to firm state control. This control was an essential feature of the political and social system, which after 1960 in the wake of the “Mexican miracle,” left the peasants to bear most of the burden of rapid economic growth (Saliba 2012). Clearly, the encroachment of capitalism, consumerism, and other forms of modernization do make inroads into backward regions and may eventually absorb and transform the peasantry, as they did in France after

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the Second World War. NAFTA and other forces of globalization will continue to play major roles in making inroads, but peasantry and rural poverty seem destined to survive in Mexico for some decades yet. The revolution and some more recent policies have achieved some major gains. Mexico is fortunate in that in 2002, it had only 20% of the population of Latin America, but received half of all foreign investment flowing to the region (Wainwright 2012), but sadly the changes wrought by its revolution have not reformed the fundamental social and political structures and embedded policies or upheld such values as democratization, appropriate regional policies, an end to ethnic discrimination, and prosecution of a genuine land reform that would break up vested interests (such as occurred in South Korea or Taiwan). Here in Mexico, the local–global dialectic has not been negotiable, regrettably, except through the medium of force and revolt (Watters and McGee 1997, pp 347–348). Mexico began the twentieth century with a peasant revolution, and sadly, with the events in Chiapas, ended it with peasants in rebellion (Photo 4.3).

Photo 4.3 A family scene in the market, San Juan, Chamula, Chiapas state

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Notes 1. Of course, such a positivist philosophy, worldview, and policies were widely restated and recycled in the 1980s and 1990s by the Friedmanite new right, who capitalized on the Reagan and Thatcher eras in the US and UK and exported the appropriate neoliberal policies to many Third World countries, such as Pinochet’s Chile. 2. There is voluminous literature on the Mexican Revolution. See, for example, Frank Tannenbaum’s Mexico: The Struggle for Peace and Bread (New York: Knopf; 2013); Howard F Cline’s The United States and Mexico, revised edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press; 2013) and Mexico: Revolution to Evolution 1940–60 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), William P Glade and Charles W Anderson’s The Political Economy of Mexico: Two Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press; 1968), Stanley R Ross’s Is the Mexican Revolution Dead? (New York: Knopf; 1966), Raymond Vernon’s The Dilemma of Mexico’s Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press; 1963), Charles Curtis Cumberland’s Mexico: The Struggle for Modernity (New York: Oxford University Press; 1968), Lesley Byrd Simpson’s Many Mexicos (Berkeley: University of California Press; 1966), and Friedrich Katz, Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution: Rural Social Conflict in Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1988). 3. Later versions of Sistema Alimentario Mexicano were tried again, e.g., Programa Nacional de Desarrollo Rural Integral by de la Madrid in 1985, but with the same lack of success. 4. Salinas did not match his economic success with reforms in the political or social arenas. After he left office, he criticized his chosen successor, Zedillo (thus breaking a tradition that former presidents did not criticize their successors), when economic failure was blamed on the Salinas government. In 1995, when his brother Raúl was arrested on charges of masterminding the assassination of Murrietta, the presidential candidate in 1994 (a charge of which he was found guilty in 1999), Salinas and his family left Mexico and later moved to Ireland, a country with no extradition treaty with Mexico. Raúl and his wife had also faced drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges. 5. After cutting state credit and assistance to peasants drastically, Salinas introduced a new scheme of direct subsidies to farmers in 1993 (PROCAMPO) and social programs (PRONASOL), ostensibly the biggest antipoverty program. However, as these policies had clear political objectives, they were often called PRIcampo and PRInasol by the peasants. 6. See Ricardo Pozas’s Juán the Chamula: The Ethnological Reconstruction of the Life of a Mexican Indian (Berkeley: University of California; 1962), F Cancian’s Economics and Prestige in a Maya Community (Palo Alto:

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Stanford University Press; 1965), EZ Vogt’s Zinacantan: A Maya Community in the Highlands of Chiapas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press; 1969), and Manning Nash’s Primitive and Peasant Economic Systems (San Francisco: Chandler; 1966).

References Baer W. Growth with inequality: The cases of Brazil and Mexico. Latin American Research Review. 1986;21(2):197–207. Barkin D. The reconstruction of a modern Mexican peasantry. Journal of Peasant Studies. 2002;30(1):73–90. Branton D. Failure to modernize the Mexican ejido. e-Mexico Journal. State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University; 1994. Brown P. Institutions, inequalities, and the impact of agrarian reform on rural Mexican communities. Human Organization. 1997;56(1):102–110. Cline HF. Mexico: Revolution to Evolution 1940–60. London: Oxford University Press; 1962. DeWalt B. Modernization in a Mexican Ejido. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1979. DeWalt B. Using indigenous knowledge to improve agriculture and natural resource management. Human Organization. 1994;53(2):123–131. Flores E. Issues of land reform. Journal of Political Economy. 1970;78(4):890– 905. Franco J. The Modern Culture of Latin America: Society and the Artist. London: Pall Mall Press; 1967. Frank AG. Mexico: The Janus faces of twentieth-century bourgeois revolution. Monthly Review. 1963;14(7):370–374. Fuentes C. The Old Gringo. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; 1985. García B, Manuela C. Iberoamérica: evolución de una economía dependiente. In: García LN (editor). Historia de las Américas (pp 565–620). Vol 4. Seville: University of Seville; 1991. Glade WP, Anderson CW. The Political Economy of Mexico: Two Studies. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press; 1963. González Santos A. La Agricultura: Estructura y Utilización de los Recursos. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica; 1957. Gutierrez Olgin T. Los recursos naturales renovables en el desarrollo económico de México. Investigación Económica. 1962;22(86):231–607. Lerner D. The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York: Macmillan; 1958. Lewis O. Pedro Martínez: A Mexican Peasant and his Family. New York: Random House; 1964.

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Lincklaen Arriens RAL. The ejido system in Mexico: some observations. Netherlands Journal of Agricultural Science. 1962;10(1):72–89. Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs. Megadiverse Mexico. 2013. Available at: https://embamex.sre.gob.mx/dinamarca/images/pdf/megaing.pdf. Accessed August 25, 2020. Miller S. The agrarian question in Mexico. Journal of Peasant Studies. 1994;22(1):164–174. Mouroz JR. Mexican Colonization Experience in the Humid Tropics. London: Wiley; 1980. Paz O. The Labyrinth of Solitude. New York: Grove Press; 1961. Poleman TT. The Papaloapan Project: Agricultural Development in the Mexican Tropics. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press; 1964. Puig AF. Chiapas: Cultures in Motion. Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico: Vientral Hombro; 2007. Raico R. Authentic German liberalism of the 19th century. 2004. Available at: https://mises.org/library/authentic-german-liberalism-19th-century. Accessed September 25, 2020. Roberts DH. Mexico: An export market profile. Latin American Weekly Report. 1986;WR-80–472:57. Ross SR. Is the Mexican Revolution Dead? New York: Alfred A Knopf; 1966. Saliba F. Catholicism eclipsed in rebel Chiapas. April 13, 2012. Guardian Weekly. Simpson LB. Many Mexicos. Berkley: University of California Press; 1941. Tannenbaum F. Mexico: The Struggle for Peace and Bread. New York: Knopf; 2013. Twomey MJ. A century of foreign investment in Mexico. 2001. Available at: http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~mtwomey/fdi/MexInv.pdf. Accessed August 25, 2020. Vogt W. Road to Survival. London: Victor Gollancz; 1948. Wainwright T. The rise of Mexico. Economist. 2012. Available at: https://www. economist.com/leaders/2012/11/24/the-rise-of-mexico. Accessed August 26, 2020. Warriner D. Land Reform and Economic Development. New York: McGraw-Hill; 1955. Watters RF. Shifting Cultivation in Latin America. Rome: FAO; 1971. Watters RF. Shifting Cultivation in Mexico. Rome: FAO; 1973. Watters RF, McGee TG. Asia-Pacific: New Geographies of the Pacific Rim. London: Hurst; 1997. Yates PL. Mexico’s Agricultural Dilemma. Tucson: University of Arizona Press; 1981.

CHAPTER 5

Mexico in the New Emerging World Order

The New Maize Doctrine and the Peasantry No crop is more important to the people of Latin America than maize, and this is especially true in Mexico (Barkin 2002; Yúnez-Naude and Paredes 2006). It is a millenarian crop and the foundation of Mexican culture. It is the cultural hearth of the Mesoamerican peoples in southern Mexico and the Guatemalan highlands, and these people believed themselves to have been molded from maize: And thus they found the food and this is what went into the body of the created man, of the formed man; this was his blood, this is what made the blood of the man. Thus, the corn entered [into the formation of the man] through the work of the Creators. And in this way they rejoiced, because they had discovered a beautiful land, filled with delights, abundant in yellow ears of maize and white ears, abundant as well in pataxte and cacao, and in countless fruits (zapotes, anonas, jocotes, nances, matasanos ) and honey. There were all kinds of tasty foods in those villages of Paxil and Cayalá (Recinos 1950).1

The Indian peasants of southern Mexico have appropriately created an enormous number of varieties and uses of their sacred crop, which still attract much study and wonder. For some time, however, government authorities have believed it wrong to cultivate maize in traditional ways. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Watters, Rural Latin America in Transition, Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65033-9_5

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Since the peasantry is seen as a traditional, backward class, they are deemed to be inefficient producers and are told that they should leave the cultivation of maize to more modern producers, either on irrigated or high-quality, rain-fed land. With the emergence of the new paradigms of neoliberalism and globalization, in which powerful countries and multinational companies predominate in the marketplace, no meaningful role has been assigned to the peasantry, despite their rich heritage and knowledge of maize culture and cuisine (Photo 5.1). In contrast to the present situation, the peasantry played largely a meaningful role over the revolutionary period. In the era of the “Mexican miracle” (1930s–1960s), as we have seen, a more modern industrial structure was built, the bureaucracy grew, and education expanded greatly. The middle sector, residing in cities, emerged, and a new process of accelerated urbanization occurred. Peasant agriculture benefited in a number of ways, but especially in producing a growing volume of food, both for themselves and the increasing numbers of urban workers, as well as some export products. New savings were generated, and the more successful paid taxes and accumulated bank savings. In this period, consumption levels were rising for almost every segment of the Mexican population.

Photo 5.1 Three peasants bring their produce to market on a very hot day in a rapidly desiccating area, Oaxaca

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The climax of this development was reached in 1962, when food selfsufficiency was achieved, making Mexico one of the few countries in the world that was able to regain self-sufficiency in its basic foodstuffs during the twentieth century. However, at this point, the government froze the price-support level for maize (Barkin 2002, p 74). This created a barrier for peasants and rural laborers, and as costs rose, they were forced to seek income from off-farm work, including greater motivation for seasonal migration to the US. Food self-sufficiency became a theme of national debate and a source of social and political conflict during the following 20 years. By the end of the 1960s and again in the late 1970s, food imports grew so dramatically as to provoke a political crisis. A broad range of remedial programs was implemented for rural communities, accompanied by pious but ineffective pledges of commitment to raise living standards in the countryside. So serious did the problem become that in 1980, the Sistema Alimentario Mexicano (Mexican food system) was created “to reconquer food self-sufficiency.” It was not allowed to truly prove itself, however, for commercial agricultural interests successfully used the 1982 debt crisis to terminate the program (Barkin 2002). In this era of Reaganomics and Thatcherite policies, a transition began toward a policy of free trade and regional integration, and the commitment to domestic food self-sufficiency was replaced by a new approach of food security, which had the goal of assuring domestic requirements from a combination of local and international sources. However, the financial, social, and environmental implications of the strategy were ignored (Barkin 2002). The short-term consequences of mounting problems of inadequate domestic food production are poverty and environmental degradation through shortening of fallows with overpopulation and/or the inability to afford chemical fertilizers and other inputs. The new maize doctrine had dire consequences for the peasantry. In spite of strong public-sector support for maize production since 1988 (tortillas are the most important food of all), the peasantry became embroiled in the worst rural crisis since land reform. Their dealings with the state and the world economy have become increasingly combative as policymakers seek to encourage the planting of maize in the irrigation regions of the north at the expense of subsistence production (Barkin 2002, pp 74–80). When NAFTA was being negotiated, a special transition agreement was made for the gradual phasing in of maize imports over a 15-year period to act as a buffer for the peasantry, but this was consistently ignored by both the trade

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and agricultural ministries, which granted over-quota imports without compensating tariffs as part of their attempts to reduce inflation. The government returned to its earlier policies of the 1960s of keeping the price of tortillas low for the benefit of the urban poor and to reduce the cost of subsidies to those groups that still received them. In effect, the peasantry was again obliged to pay for anti-inflation and low-wage policies (Barkin 2002, p 80). The takeoff of maize imports was spectacular: a fivefold increase over the last 15 years of the twentieth century, resulting from a combination of policies and pressures from policymakers, including adjusting the Mexican economy to accommodate its new free-trade partners. Most serious of all was pushing through early in the 1990s the controversial amendment to article 27 of the Mexican Constitution early in the 1990s, mentioned earlier. This “counteragrarian reform,” as its opponents called it, declared an end to the land reform and established the conditions for issuing land titles and the transfer of property deeds by gift or sale, as supported by President Salinas de Gortari’s neoliberal economic ideas (Barkin 2002). The politicoeconomic environment changed strongly against the peasantry, increasing their vulnerability. The Secretariat actually proclaimed that the peasants were part of the problem, an obstacle to rural progress, and hence condemned them to extinction. As the Undersecretary for Agricultural Planning declared, “It is the policy of my government to remove half of the population from rural Mexico during the next five years.” Programs that supported production were removed, following guidelines that adhered strictly to the rules of free trade written by the World Trade Organization, and a new system of direct payments to the producers themselves was introduced (PROCAMPO). This was based on the personal commitment of peasants to their families and their lands, instead of to their productive activities (Barkin 2002, p 81). Barkin rightly states that for over 30 years, government policies toward production and international trade in maize reveal the “technocratic prejudices” and “modernizing ideologies” of bureaucrats and politicians (Barkin 2002, p 74). These words precisely define the problem that I described in 1963 primarily in class terms: the ladino politicians and officials looked down upon what they saw as a backward, ignorant, and inferior peasantry (Watters 1971). However, a remarkable outcome has occurred. Despite government intimidation and disparagement, poor campesinos persist in sowing maize in their communities and do so with determination, generating large volumes for their own use and local

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consumption. How can this “stubborn irrationality” of the peasantry, to use Barkin’s (2002) words, be explained? In my view, in part it reflects essential peasant qualities: their determination to hang on, their pride, to persist, and above all to survive. The perennial teosinte, believed to be the predecessor of modern-day maize, was domesticated some 6,000 years ago and became the basic food crop for the pre-Colombian peoples and the centerpiece of all the cultures, including Aztec, Olmec, and Maya, who used the products to produce a variety of tortillas in many colors and shapes, depending on local customs and preferences: tamale, posole, tlacoyos, and pinole are regional uses that still survive today, as well as the international popcorn (Photo 5.2). The blind, ethnocentric official policies have wreaked an appalling legacy on society and the ecosystem. As Barkin aptly puts it: “Mexican agriculture lies victim to its own modernisation” (Barkin 2002). In the same way as the authoritarian but modernizing regime of Porfirio Díaz in the first decade of the twentieth century had been captured by the conventional wisdom of the day, the positivism of the científicos , so the Mexican authorities in the last decade of the century were likewise seduced by the blandishments of neoliberal ideas on the benefits of free trade and the profits to be won from greater investment from foreign

Photo 5.2

Peasant women offering their crops for sale, Etla market

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firms, expanded agroindustries, and a new structure of production specialization. The masses, on the other hand, became progressively impoverished as a result of a new structure of production specialization enforced by a complex system of international relations. Significantly, the government embraced the structural adjustment programs and accompanying wage-containment policies, known as tripartite pactos that included the interests and representations of workers, government, and entrepreneurs. However, that was not successful, polarizing Mexican society deeply in the 1990s (Dresser 1994). While maize imports grew eightfold between 1970 and 2012, domestic production doubled between 1985 and 2012 (Table 5.1). The average increase in productivity is explained by the increase in the proportion of maize planted in irrigated areas. As a result of this practice, there was a steep decline in the real price paid for maize: from a high of 1,400 pesos per ton in 1988 to less than 600 pesos per ton in 2000 (Barkin 2002, p 80) (Fig. 5.1). While the harvested area of maize stagnated at 7–8 million hectares per year, there was significant growth in the irrigated area, from about 500,000 hectares in the early 1970s to almost 2 million hectares in 1993–1994, a fourfold increase (see Fig. 5.2). Slow growth in the 1970s was followed by an acceleration from 1990, due to a major change in distributing water rights within irrigation districts, favoring farmers who planted high-yielding varieties of hybrid maize. Farmers who gained cherished permits for export crops either paid lower prices or were not charged at all for water use in maize cultivation. This was especially concentrated in three northern states bordering the US, where a third of the total irrigated maize area was moved to at extraordinary human cost (Barkin 2002, pp 80–81). The privatization and modernization of the countryside were also assisted by the dramatic counteragrarian reform legislation. The rain-fed regions in west-central Mexico, where commercial maize growing had been important, had declined and the pattern of regional distribution altered greatly, but the resilient peasantry continued to increase productivity. The commitment of the peasants to growing their precious maize has not declined. Although maize planting in irrigated lands has an enormous advantage, peasants have continued to increase output per hectare more rapidly in the rain-fed areas during the last third of the twentieth century than has occurred in the irrigation districts (Barkin 2002, p 80) (Photo 5.3).

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Table 5.1 Maize production in Mexico, 1970–2012

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Fig. 5.1 Maize production and consumption: rain-fed and irrigated, 1970– 2012

The Other Mexico: The Case of Chiapas While peasant society and culture have been toughened over the centuries by external domination and exploitation and their traditions and spirit support their efforts to continue to survive and maintain their independence, how do they manage to improve their productivity when they know that planting maize is not profitable? Some observers have suggested that the peasant milpa has shown extraordinary qualities, enabling peasants under pressure to increase or improve the intensification and diversification of their production or to utilize the microclimates and ecological differences even more fully. In the rolling hill country that commonly occurs in areas like Chiapas and Oaxaca, a milpa of slash-andburn character complements an irrigated field or pasture, and at different altitudes, a range of different crops exploit microclimatic variations. There is indeed much to admire in classic milpa agriculture, but it should not be idealized or its advantages exaggerated.

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Fig. 5.2 Maize harvested area, total: rain-fed and irrigated, 1970–2012

Photo 5.3 Villagers leave their donkeys or mules in this yard close to the nearby market, Oaxaca state

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In 1963, I worked in a number of Indian communities in the Chiapas Highlands. Chiapas still has 34% of the varieties of maize that continue to exist in Mexico. The Chiapas Highlands, home of the Highland Maya, comprises six natural land types (karstic uplands, limestone benches and basins, limestone scarps, volcanic ridges, ash plains and gullies, and floodplains) and three climatic/vegetation zones (Watters 1971, pp 73–74; Kaplan 1956–1959). Ladino farmers or peasants mostly engage in raising cattle on the savannah, growing sugar or maize for sale, or growing coffee in the subtropical zone. The population is predominantly Indian, though with the communities ladino-ized to varying degrees and whose responses to modernization and adoption of improved practices diverge from one another and from those of ladino communities. In the cooler climatic conditions of the region, semipermanent cropping or short-fallow systems, such as the two- and three-field systems of the Venezuelan Andes, might normally be expected. However, burning seems to be a desirable practice for the Indian communities, to gain potash from the ash, so the slash-and-burn milpa with the maize–bean–squash complex forms an integral part of their culture complex. Among the Indian communities, shifting cultivation occupies a varying place in the economy, being—as at Amatenango del Valle—merely an important supplement to irrigated maize fields and pasture and pottery production, while elsewhere, where little or no irrigation is practiced, slash-and-burn milpas constitute the essential base of the local economy. In Chamula society, milpa agriculture is based essentially on hoe culture, the almost exclusive use of human force for work, and the use of animal manure, especially sheep dung, for fertilizer. On very small parcelas, the primary crops of maize and beans are interplanted with the secondary crops of potatoes, squash, lima beans, and other legumes that also form part of the milpa complex. Supplementary crops, such as citrus, fruit, and cane, are grown in places where the ladinos would not consider them commercially feasible (Fig. 5.3). According to Guiot, in the 1960s an average of about 265 hectares was sown with maize in each ejido per year, giving a total of 43,460 hectares for the 164 ejidos of the highlands. The harvest averaged about 800 kilograms per hectare. A total of about 16,963 hectares was sown with beans (190 kilograms per hectare) and 2,515 with wheat (600 kilograms per hectare on average). In three villages I visited, the average area of milpa per family varied from about 0.5–1 hectare, which seemed to be about half the maximum that could be worked in a year in this environment

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Fig. 5.3 Map of Chiapas state

with such a low level of technology. Lands that bore a forest cover were preferred for clearing, but distance from the village and the character of the local climate were important in selecting sites for rain-fed cultivation. Generally, the peasant tried to select sites on both higher and lower land in order to capitalize on microclimatic differences and to protect himself from crop failures and pests (serious in many parts) that occur in any one area (Watters 1971, pp 173–174; Wagner 1962; Guiot 1964). Sowing rates seemed to vary considerably with local climatic and soil differences. In some settlements, such as Oxchuc, only three seeds of grain were sown per hole, while in other settlements six seeds were

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needed. Around San Juan Chamula, the planting: harvest ratio was 1:25– 1:27, for about 30 kilograms of maize seed are sown per hectare to give an average yield of 800 kilograms. Settlements varied widely in their maize output: some produced a surplus, while others produced barely half their annual requirements or roughly 1,800 kilograms per family of five (Watters 1971; Siverts 1956; Guiteras Holmes 1948). Where land was scarce or soil resources particularly poor, crafts may have been more highly developed. The land of other ejidos may have been invaded or a greater proportion of the populace engaged in regular wage labor or annual migration to the coffee fincas near the Pacific Coast for up to three months (Watters 1971).2 At densely settled San Juan Chamula, an annual visit of three months to the coffee fincas near Tapachula was usual, while other men engaged in wage labor for up to six months of the year. Income was also gained by the sale of fruits, vegetables, flowers, eggs, poultry, wool, firewood (often about 90 pesos per month), charcoal (40–90 carnitas worth 7–8 pesos each), and a little sale of pine needles to spread on the floor. Only approximately half the community’s maize requirements were grown locally (Watters 1971, p 180). When I undertook fieldwork in Chiapas 50 years ago, I was concerned to observe in the high zone the obvious effects of population pressure, such as steady deforestation, overgrazing by increased sheep and goat husbandry, and signs of accelerated erosion, such as gullying. One theory at the time that received considerable credibility was that of Pozas, Aguirre, and Collier, who argued separately that native peasants such as the Highland Maya of Chiapas (like the Quechua Indian peasants of the Peruvian Andes) had withdrawn to mountain or desert “refuge areas,” where they lived on marginal lands isolated from competition. Here, they developed or preserved an ethos that made them resistant to innovation or change. The culture they developed thus reflected the heritage of colonial domination (Pozas 1959). Collier argued that land was overused to the extent that within a decade or two, native secondary forest was turned into heavily eroded gullies and runoffs. At this altitude, milpas on forested hillsides cannot generate regrowth at the rate required for intensive swidden agriculture (Collier 1975). A study on Tzotzil milpas in the Chiapas Highlands (Mariaca et al. 2007) updates my work, but it is interesting that problems I identified still existed and appear to have got worse: the high rate of population growth (above the national mean); land-tenure conflicts; accelerated deforestation; increase in soil erosion, especially due to overgrazing; religious and political conflicts; increasing rural pauperization due to a continued fall

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in prices of goods produced by the peasantry; increased migration to the urban centers San Cristóbal de las Casas, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Mexico City, and also emigration to the US; increased social tensions, bad nutrition, and a high death rate; a low level of educational services; the growth of drug cartels; and the high toll of marginalization. Nevertheless, the rich cultural heritage and great value placed on traditional precepts, customs, and community organization were emphasized (Mariaca et al. 2007, p 28). David Barkin in 2002 completes his explanation for the surprising resurgence of the Mexican peasantry, in spite of massive government discouragement and deliberate antipeasant policies, by emphasizing that rural communities are actively involved “in a complex process to construct their own social and production alternatives to respond to the challenges of globalisation.” Although they attempted to strengthen the “culture of maize,” including some adoption of new high-yielding hybrid maize,3 at the heart of their efforts, their activities were numerous and diverse: a third of Mexico’s population—over 40 million people—continued to live in rural areas, and thus a broad base existed to support them. Most important of all are the remittances and other transfers received in peasant villages from other parts of Mexico and overseas. Many of these absent relatives, though now working in cities or industrial organizations, remain committed to their relatives and the welfare of their own native peasant communities. Around 2002, these transfers exceeded 40% of the value of all rural production. As such, they are subsidizing the maize production and indeed the very survival of their home communities in this way to a considerable extent (Barkin 2002, p 72). In recent years, the demand for consumer goods made from locally grown varieties and other peasant products, including amaranth, honey, and beans, has expanded considerably. This trend has become pronounced in the case of maize, as large numbers of urban residents, following a worldwide appreciation of organic production, now purchase handmade tortillas by the dozen or even smaller quantities at prices as much as three times the prevailing rate. Again, colored tortillas, tamale made from criollo maize, mole, posole, and other traditional foods from Mexico’s indigenous or peasant cultures fetch premium prices from peasant-woman sellers in many parts of Mexico. Moreover, traditional methods of making tortillas are better nutritionally than mass-produced ones made with processed flour.

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On the day that the much-vaunted NAFTA was initiated, January 1, 1994, a little-known group, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) took over the historic city of San Cristóbal de las Casas and all major towns in eastern Chiapas, and announced the beginning of an armed struggle. Although President Zedillo dispatched 12,000 troops to Chiapas and soon inflicted a defeat on the 2,000 well-trained Maya rebels, the Zapatistas retreated to their inaccessible strongholds in the Lacandón rainforest from which, led by Subcomandante Marcos, they conducted the first postmodern guerrilla war against 40,000–60,000 government forces. From this forgotten backwater, Marcos, with his carefully constructed persona—partly a cult version of Che Guevara or a latter-day Robin Hood—dispatched updates to the world’s press via email using a lighter socket in his jeep. A new legend was in the making. What is Chiapas like (see Fig. 5.3, Chiapas)? It is commonly regarded as almost a throwback to the eighteenth century. Certainly, many parts of it are a colonial relic, still showing the legacy of latifundism, ethnic/class discrimination, underdevelopment, demoralization, and almost perpetual food shortages. Most of the Mexican Revolution passed Chiapas by, there being no middle class to push reform forward. Maya Indian society often seemed atomized or fossilized in communities with more modern developments and encroachment of ladino farms. In 2010, it appeared that over half the land (usually the best) is owned, as it was prior to 1910, by landowners who comprise only 2% of the population. More recent developments have widened the inequalities, for Chiapas has huge natural resources. At the turn of the new millennium, Chiapas produces 55% of Mexico’s hydroelectricity and is the major producer of coffee, cattle, and cacao. It is fourth in natural gas and produces 5% of Mexico’s timber and 4% of its oil. However, in spite of its great hydroelectricity generation, seven out of ten indigenous homes have no electricity. Nine in ten dwellings have no reticulated water. The paradox continues when we consider that Chiapas produces 28% of Mexico’s meat supply, yet of its population of 4.3 million (a third of which is Indian), 66% suffer from malnutrition and 90% cannot afford to buy meat. Moreover, 19% of the people have no income, 37% of men and 63% of women are illiterate, and 40% of farmers are paid half the minimum wage (US$3 a day). Infant mortality is double the rate in the rest of Mexico, and a third of adult deaths are caused by curable infectious diseases (Tree 2007, pp 172–174). Finally, it must be said that although the position of women in such a macho society as Mexico is in general appalling, it is much

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worse in the Chiapas Highlands. There, all the complexities of Conquest and the Indians’ humiliation, anger, and guilt seem to be voiced in the universal condemnation of women in the form of misogyny. With their world vision destroyed, the Maya took the ideal of the Catholic Virgin Mary to heart. With their old powers removed, women accepted the discipline of sufferance and learnt to be nonjudgmental, meek, accepting, ever-loving, ever-giving, silent, and as patient as the Mother of Christ or Guadalupe herself. If men needed someone to blame, the Catholic Church seemed to offer them readymade punchbags in the form of their own women. Such facts reveal acute poverty, degradation, and underdevelopment, causes enough perhaps to explain revolt. But we need to look more deeply at the structures and systems that the Indian communities were involved in.

Structures and Systems of Repression and Impoverishment It is important to realize that in the 1917 Constitution, a centerpiece of the Mexican Revolution, it was only “peasants“ and “communities” that were recognized as having rights to land. Indians in the time of Porfirio Díaz, as in the nineteenth century, had no rights at all, the state claiming for itself a pre-Hispanic Indian ancestry. The Indian majority had been unevenly assimilated into the category of “citizens,” but only as individuals did they enjoy supposed legal equality, the recognized right of every citizen. However, the essence of being an Indian was to belong to a corporate body, a community, and a living culture. In other words, the law rendered them as Indians, invisible to the state (Gilly 2002).4 Chiapas was left at the margins of the Mexican Revolution, not even experiencing a “revolution from without,” as did the state of Yucatan. The Obregón government in the 1920s made a deal with the local landlord oligarchy who totally dominated peasant and Indian pueblos. Modernization occurred from above without the slightest change in social relations, such that railroads, highways, investment, hydroelectricity dams, and state administration were all laid over a little-known structure of servile relations and maintained by force and ignorance. For the Indians, the true revolution did not occur until the time of President Cardenas in the second half of the 1930s and early 1940s. Maya Indians were then finally included in the revolution, but really only as peasants and ejidatarios, less (or not at all) as Indians. The price

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of this limited inclusion was subordination to the tutelage of the state: guardianship in exchange for protection. The state successfully incorporated communities that had their own ancestral, corporatist traditions of social organization and politics, interwoven with their own community beliefs and religious offices. From this hybridization, an unforeseen outcome occurred, according to Gilly, that was different from the outcome resulting from the integration that some states had achieved with other urban or peasant sectors. He quotes from John Rus: With the passage of time … [the state] managed to co-opt not only the native leaders who were their direct collaborators but also, ironically, the very community structures previously identified with resistance to outside intervention and exploitation: independent self-government, strictly enforced community solidarity, and religious legitimation of political power. As a result, by the mid-1950s, what anthropologists [and social scientists] were just beginning to describe as “closed corporate communities“ had in fact become “institutionalized revolutionary committees” harnessed to the state. (Gilly 2002, p 329)

This incorporation also produced a result widely known in Mexico: it converted the state into the peasants’ primary counselor, to whom all their demands, expectations, and requests would henceforth be directed. Therefore, it was no longer landlords or hacendados but the state and federal governments to whom they must turn. The strength of this corporate paternalism of the state, which as Arturo Warman noted could convert the peasantry into its hijos predilectos (favored children), was at the same time also a major weakness for the state, since it was unable to “rid itself of the stubborn and discomforting presence of the peasantry” (Gilly 2002, p 324). The key figure in the relationship came to be the local community leader who had one foot in the community and its traditions and the other in the PRI’s time-crafted system of negotiation and co-option. Usually, he was able to accumulate income and privileges (some not always visible) for himself and his family. It has been suggested that “the more he compromised himself with the state, the more he invoked his own “Indian-ness” and the defense of “Indian culture” (Gilly 2002). Of course, the well-known, irreplaceable figure of the cacique exists at the nexus between the peasant-community culture and the dominating state. In the case of Chiapas, the system of negotiation and mediation within which the caciques and power brokers operated had particular

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characteristics. First, the domination of the state was based on the isolation and enclosure of the Indian communities. Their different languages distinguished them, and the racism of the ruling oligarchy added to their isolation. Secondly, as we have seen, the modernization of the elites and extension of capitalist relations from 1945 to the late 1960s did not modernize the exploitation of Indian communities. The appropriation of the lands and labor remained feudal in character, with institutionalized repression and servile labor relations enforced when dealing with Indians. The subordinated absorption of communities with their largely unchanged internal social relations into corporate relations was frozen in time. The model of domination—a modernization without social change—left the Indians in control of beliefs, values, and hierarchies of their own world, but it was “a world apart, subordinated to, but neither modified by, nor absorbed into, the political culture of the ruling régime” (Gilly 2002). No doubt the Chiapas elite saw the closed character of rural communities as the inevitable result of the “backwardness,” “ignorance,” and “inferiority” of the Indians. But of course, this Indian sector, left to itself, increasingly starved of land and other resources, subjected to growing population pressure and growing immiseration, did not stay unchanged. As Gilly argues: … in due time, as happened in so many other places, this secret world, invisible to the dominators, changed from a place of silent subordination to, first, a place of equally silent resistance, and later, to one of secret subversion accessible only to those belonging to that world. But it turns out, there were tens of thousands who belonged to that world. (Gilly 2002)

And, we might add tens of thousands of people around the world, who— learning of their plight—became strong supporters and allies in their struggle to win justice and dignity at last. Given the structures and systems that were put in place in Chiapas and throughout Mexico, certain events inevitably followed. For example, in 1968, the student movement in Mexico City was brutally repressed and government agents murdered hundreds of people in the Tlatelolco massacre. Many activists carried on their struggle underground, and over the next decade, more than two dozen urban guerrilla groups developed. In the countryside, there was continued pressure for land, which in

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the late 1970s led to organized local revolts against indigenous caciques aligned with the PRI. Over the next two decades, 50,000 Indians labeled “the enemies of tradition” were expelled from their communities for resisting local power holders (Hansen 2002). A crisis also emerged in the 1970s within the CNC, the national confederation of campesinos, the main agency for mediation between peasants and the state. Official resources earlier available for the peasantry were now drying up, with government funding now increasingly being directed instead toward private, commercial agriculture. The CNC could thus no longer fulfill its functions of aiding the peasant sector. In Chiapas, as in other states, new independent organizations of ejidatarios and peasants formed and launched a struggle for land, credit, services, technical help, and marketing assistance. New local leaders emerged in this situation, challenging the old caciques and power brokers and exploiting differences between national and state government policies (Gilly 2002, p 329). Removal of subsidies for cultivation of maize and coffee weakened the old system of state protectionism and the old corporations linked with it. It soon became clear that a new alliance was developing through the traditional channels between vigorous national finance capital and the old Chiapas ruling oligarchy. Both parties became linked by their investments in cattle, coffee, precious hardwood, construction, and the downstream effects of the large-scale Grijalva hydroelectricity project, and in the 1970s, large oil reserves were found in Chiapas, attracting the interest of private capital. In October 1974, an important historical event occurred: at the invitation of the state governor, the Catholic Diocese of San Cristóbal organized the first Indigenous Congress of Chiapas. Over 1,200 delegates represented not only the four main Indian cultures in Chiapas— Tzotziles, Tzeltales, Tojolabales, and Choles—but also 300 communities who demanded land reform, education in native languages, health care, and labor rights. It marked a significant achievement for indigenous grassroots organization and brought to the Indians the influence of the church, while bringing to the church the force of the Indians’ suffering, demands, and religious exigencies. While the state government at first supported the congress, it then withdrew its support in the face of radical Indian demands and denunciations and refused to recognize it.

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The congress was seen by many to be a response to a situation of violence and repression initiated by the national and state governments allied with the Chiapas oligarchy. In March 1974, 40 soldiers torched the 29 hovels in the shantytown of San Francisco in Altamirano. Thereafter, Chiapas was “a region aflame and dislocated”: repressions, evictions, detentions, killings, torture, wounding, and rapes by soldiers or landowner-hired police were often answered by peasant reprisals (Gilly 2002). In 1982, General Absalón Castellanos Domínguez became governor of Chiapas and supervised a dramatic increase in militarization, supporting the legal consolidation of the properties of landlords, especially cattle ranches. The government of Miguel de la Madrid (1982–1988) issued 2,932 certificados de inafectabilidad de propriedades agricolas (75% of the total number of such certificates issued since 1934) and 4,714 certificates for cattle properties (90% of total for that period) (Gilly 2002, p 330). This land redistribution was part of a surge in privatization of public companies, increased foreign investment, and other austerity measures required by Mexico’s creditors to deal with the debt crisis. At the same time, Mexico was being prepared to later enter NAFTA, aligning itself with the prevailing dominance of Reaganomics and Thatcherite thinking, and the lauded Friedmanite economic experiment in Chile under the dictator Pinochet. The policy of economic neoliberalism without political democratization was, however, likely to be explosive. In 1985, a huge earthquake destroyed large areas of Mexico City. The inadequate and corrupt management of the disaster by government officials was apparent, weakening the control of the PRI and encouraging civil society to organize itself. The presence of Subcomandante Marcos and other activists who had already established the Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas was strengthened by this and other events. When the opposition candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas was ahead in the polling in the 1988 presidential election, hope started rising. However, the vote-counting computers suddenly crashed, and three days later the PRI candidate Carlos Salinas was declared the winner although it was widely believed to be fraudulent (Hansen 2002, p 71). The Zapatista movement gained ground, and by the following year, it numbered over 1,300 armed members. By 1993, Zapatista communities had approved a military offensive by the EZLN and formed the Clandestine Indigenous Revolutionary Committee—the general command to lead the struggle.

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But what was the actual catalyst, the triggering mechanism? It is clear that this was Salinas’s rewriting in 1992 of the famous article 27 of the 1917 Mexican Constitution. When he ended in one blow the whole process of land redistribution and promoted the sale and rent of communal ejidos to private capital and agribusiness, he was seen by many impoverished Mexicans, including Chiapas peasants, to have betrayed the revolution. He was regarded as a traitor to the goal of Tierra y Libertad, to all that Emiliano Zapata had fought for. The government was now no longer the peasants’ ally, but in fact, in taking up the role of the large landowner, it became the enemy of the people of Chiapas. It appears the Zapatista leaders had been preparing for some time, so the date of the inauguration of NAFTA, the symbol of foreign multinational power and dominance, seemed highly appropriate for breaching the dam that was holding back their discontent. In January 1996, the Chase Manhattan Bank issued a report calling for the Mexican government to eliminate the Zapatistas. A month later, the army launched a massive invasion, displacing almost 20,000 peasants. During the next five years, over 60,000 troops occupied nearly every corner of the state, disrupting the lives, economy, and culture of Indian communities. What were the goals of the Zapatistas? They did not seek to achieve power, but something that Marcos pointed out was “even harder to win: a new world.” They sought democratization and decentralization of Mexican society, autonomy and self-determination for indigenous communities, and protection of their cultural heritage. Seeing themselves as part of the long tradition of Mexican struggle against oppression and colonization (Hidalgo, Morelos, Juarez, Zapata, and Villa), they now wanted an end to NAFTA and neoliberalism, and protection of women’s rights (Ramírez et al. 2008; Vicente 2004). Although peace talks began with the PRI government, the Zedillo government began to stall on delivering the peace agreement, fearful of setting a dangerous precedent. However, by this stage, many scores of international journalists had arrived in Mexico or Chiapas, and international scrutiny was now directed at the PRI, the aged ruling political party. Allegations of corruption, cronyism, neglect of duty, and government fraud were made, and while the dominance of the PRI party had earlier given Mexico great stability and freedom from military rule and enabled substantial economic development to occur, its reputation now lay in tatters.

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Vicente Fox, the candidate of the center-right National Action Party (PAN), capitalized on this widespread discontent to win the historic presidential election in 2000, at last ending the unbroken rule of the PRI party of 71 years. When the Zapatistas organized a march to Mexico City in March 2001, culminating in a demonstration of 250,000 people demanding that the Ley Indigena be approved by Congress, Fox welcomed them and urged adoption of the law that would bolster the rights and increase the autonomy of the indigenous people of Chiapas. When, however, the Congressional Peace Commission (COCOPA) law was watered down by Fox, it was rejected by the indigenous communities and Zapatistas, and since then, dialogue with the government has been suspended. Fox appeared to display open-mindedness, fairness, and a willingness to address the oppression of underprivileged groups, but secretly he had another agenda. He promised to reduce unemployment and inflation, decrease government expenditure, root out corruption, and establish a more efficient public service. He called on the US Congress to recognize the US’s Mexican immigrants, initiated an anti-drug trafficking program, and belatedly began the investigation of human rights abuses under the PRI. However, there was no sign of a “new economic miracle” being created, and Fox was not able to initiate policy change while faced with a hostile congress. His influential private secretary resigned, deciding the presidency was in thrall to the political aspirations of his wife, Marta Sahagún. Although Vicente Fox was still generally popular, PAN lost a number of state elections, and there were signs of a resurgence in popularity of the old PRI party. The discerning traveler Isabella Tree has provided a frightening picture of internal class relations in 1998 resulting from the impingement of external forces (Tree 2007), and this has been backed up by later work by anthropologists. The caciques had the monopoly on the shops allowed to trade in Chamula: it was they who introduced Coca-Cola in the 1970s, and it was they who sold all the compulsory religious trappings like pox (a lethal local alcohol derived from sugar cane and maize) and copal (incense) at vastly inflated prices, as well as dozens of candles villagers were expected to light in church each week. The caciques included most of the hundred powerful shamans, who insisted on the custom of heavy pox drinking, not only because they were the only ones licensed to sell it but also because it kept the adult male population at least in a pliable state of addiction and poverty. If a young man did not drink pox with the boys, he was branded a homosexual and hounded out of the square. If people got sick, they had to go to the

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shaman for a “cure,” which was very expensive: 16 bottles of Coke for one healing, and pox as well.

Chiapas in 2010 In August 2010, I made a visit to Chiapas for a week. In such a brief time, I was only able to make a few observations, noting some changes since my fieldwork there nearly 50 years ago. In the drive from Tuxtla Gutiérrez to the Chiapas Highlands, we traversed tropical llanos country, where cattle grazed on unimproved pastures. Much of this land was of course formerly possessed by Indian campesinos, expropriated some decades ago by ladino capitalists seeking to cash in on good prospects for cattle grazing. The unimproved grasslands remained much the same as in the 1960s. The main city in the Chiapas Highlands was still an attractive place, which reached a population of 190,000 in 2012, in a state with a population of 4.8 million. San Cristóbal de las Casas is not only a regional center for the Highlands but also an important tourist town. Visitors are attracted not only by the diverse Maya cultures but also by the outstanding textiles and embroidery produced by Tzotzil women and displayed in the city’s shops. I was most interested to return to Na Bolom, the hacienda house of Swiss anthropologist and photographer Trudy (Gertude) Blom (1901– 1993) and her Danish archaeologist husband Frans Blom (1893–1963). Na Bolom means “jaguar house” in the Tzotzil language, as well as being a play on its former owners’ name. We stayed there in 1963. Na Bolom continues the Bloms’ work, operating as a museum and research center for the study and support of Chiapas’s indigenous cultures and natural environment. It is also a center for community and environmental programs in indigenous areas. The Bloms also fought to protect the scattered Lacandon people of east Chiapas and their own tropical rainforest environment, the last one of any size in North America, which is being rapidly deforested by encroaching settlers, cattle farmers, and unstable slash-and-burn colonists. A film shown at Na Bolom quotes a Lacandon Indian who has 80 useful plant species growing on his land. He has farmed it continuously for 20 years without having to shift and clear new jungle. Na Bolom has a library of over 9,000 books and documents (a major resource on the Maya) and acts as a research base for Harvard and Chicago anthropologists formerly led by Evon Vogt and George Foster (Fig. 5.4). Near the city lie the Tzotzil municipalities of San Juan Chamula and Zinacantán, in which villages are primarily market and ceremonial centers.

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Fig. 5.4 Repeated map of Chiapas state

At about 2,500 meters altitude, the Chamula people live in a densely settled valley. This is the third most visited community in Mexico, and in spite of undergoing massive change, the Chamula still strongly clings to their identity. It is estimated that 47% of the people are bilingual. I saw some milpas on slopes that were being eroded, but generally the land was intensively farmed with great efficiency. Pears and peach trees were grown, and on the plots where the houses were located, maize, beans, and squash were interplanted. Most houses were adobe, but an increasing number of concrete block houses (cold in winter) had gone up in recent years (the result perhaps of remittances from relatives) and some iron

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roofs were replacing tiled roofs. No attempt had been made, unfortunately, to include guttering and downpipes to catch rainwater. In sum, 45 varieties of maize (including the four-basic red, black, white, and yellow varieties) were grown. One or two Maya crosses dressed with fresh vegetation, symbolizing their ancient religious and cosmological beliefs, could be seen near the roadside. As Indian peasants usually saw schooling as a wedge driven into the heart of peasant society, removing children from peasant tasks, the education level was the lowest in the country. At age 10 or 11 years, many children had already started to work. The nearby valley of Zinacantán also shares a cold and rainy territory, with different species of pine, oak, and other subtropical species wisely left on the steeper hilltops. The cropping here is even more intensive than at San Juan Chamula. The microclimate may be a little warmer or the soil more fertile. Fruit trees, including peach trees, dotted the landscape, and intensive intercropping of maize–beans–squash occurs. There were a good number of plastic “glasshouses” in the valley, and plastic-hose irrigation was widely used. Tethered sheep, kept only for their wool, were another feature. Zinacantán consisted of 26 hamlets, comprising in total about 30,000 people. Some people wore ribbons, representing feathers worn by the earliest Maya. Extended families, comprising a good number of people, traditionally come together and work over a week to complete a feathered carpet. Some families had specialized in a big way in textiles and wove many items that were displayed for sale. Although many tourists visit both San Juan Chamula and Zinacantán and some families have specialized in these skills to an advanced degree, I gained the impression that sales to tourists were likely to be very uneven, with few likely to benefit substantially. The homes of some of these people had probably had electricity for some years. One day, while I visited the Zapatista center in San Cristóbal, my two daughters decided they would visit the famous Maya archaeological site of Palenque. This involved a lengthy drive in a tourist minivan, passing through about 35–50 km of Zapatista villages. They found it rather disturbing that they were stopped by masked people who searched the vehicle to check it was purely a tourist vehicle. Later, they realized that Zapatistas were often subjected to violence from the armed forces. Since my visit, Catholicism has been eclipsed in Chiapas. In 2012, more than a quarter of the state’s population of 4.8 million were Protestants and evangelicals (Methodists, Baptists, Adventists, and so on). Their

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27% share of the total population has doubled in 20 years (Saliba 2012). The expelled people either had to get away from their land and out of their communities or die, with their houses often torched. Tzotzil Indians say they are not giving up the culture of their ancestors, although they are pleased to adopt a new religion. There are dozens of evangelical churches now in San Cristóbal de las Casas. There are even 500 Muslims adopting the name Muhammad, praying five times a day, and learning the Koran, even though they have never left the state, though many favor Pentecostal churches, which are packed and have electronic organs that pump out rousing hallelujahs while the faithful wave, clap, and dance with eyes closed to the sound of rock, pop, or salsa. One local anthropologist states that the Indians are disappointed by Catholicism, which has been tainted by colonial rule and authoritarian mestizo priests. On the other hand, the evangelical churches respect their parallel beliefs and seem to try to meet their spiritual needs, as well as recognizing the need for solidarity in the face of poverty, discrimination, and illiteracy. Indeed, the expelled Indians soon feel they are armed with a new faith so they can stand up for themselves against the Catholic caciques and traditional leaders. Some thank God and the new religion for giving them strength to give up pox, the powerful local firewater. Sandra Gomez, a Texan anthropologist, points out that the conflicts are not about religion, but about politics and the economy (Saliba 2012). One of the few prominent Catholics who opposed the violent expulsions was Samuel Ruiz, Bishop of San Cristobál, who was also a rare exponent of liberation theology. Ruiz established close links with Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatista uprising in defense of Indians. When the bishop died in early 2011, the EZLN paid tribute to him. The large number of expulsions of peasants, followed by mass conversions to new faiths, clearly worried the Catholic clergy, and no doubt was an important factor in the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Guanajuato state in March 2012 (Saliba 2012). The following Pope, Pope Francis (a Latin American), reached out to the Maya people and received a very warm reception but must have been deeply dismayed and disappointed by this earlier development. Clearly, class formation and its effects have been all too present in Chamula and Chiapas in the last four decades. To discuss contemporary Latin America, we must look more closely into the character of Mexico and how it relates to its powerful and wealthy neighbor immediately to the north. Over the last few decades, it has been customary to describe Mexico as caught somewhere between a turbulent

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past and a promising future. This is true, but it is clear that the economy has performed very well in recent years and the future is indeed brighter. While China has been by far the biggest exporter to Latin America for some time, frequent protests and the increasing confidence of China’s restive workforce have led to a steady rise in wages. While in 2000 it cost just US$0.32 an hour to employ a Chinese manufacturing worker, against $1.32 for a Mexican one, by 2011 Chinese wages had quintupled to $1.63, whereas Mexican pay had risen to only $2.10 (Wainwright 2012, p 16). With the Chinese renminbi rocketing, the minimum wage in Shanghai and Qingdao was higher than in Mexico City and Monterrey though in January 2020 the minimum wage increased in Mexico. International shipping costs have also risen substantially, with the price of oil tripling in the last decade. A container can take three months to travel from China to the US, whereas products traveling domestically in Mexico can be trucked to their destination, taking only a few days to arrive (Wainwright 2012, p 14). Being next door to the world’s largest economy and richest market is an enormous advantage, attracting a lot of international manufacturing investment, especially when the US’s economy is buoyant. Conversely, when the US is in recession, the drop in demand will also hit Mexico: in 2009, Mexico’s economy contracted by 6% (Wainwright 2012). In terms of its GDP, around 2007 Mexico was 14th or 15th in the world, ranking just ahead of South Korea (Friedman 2010). In both 2011 and 2012, the Mexican economy grew more quickly than Brazil’s. Mexico is already the world’s biggest exporter of flat-screen televisions and other consumer electronics, fridge-freezers, cars, and aerospace components, and export of other products is increasing steadily. In northern Mexico, many of the large cities are expanding their output, as well as the maquiladoras (assembly plants) along the Rio Grande border. When Mexico decided to join NAFTA in 1994, it turned its back on tariffs and trade controls and opted for the benefits of globalization. It became a place where the world does business. The elimination of most tariffs among Mexico, the US, and Canada was followed by many more: Mexico nowadays (2020) has free trade agreements with almost 50 countries, more than any other nation. When conditions are favorable, Mexico exports manufactured goods of about the same value as all of the rest of Latin America. Trade makes up a bigger share of its GDP than in any other large country. In

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north and central Mexico, German companies turn out electrical components for European and Canadian firms to assemble aircraft parts, and the German multinational Siemens employs 6,000 people at 13 factories and three research centers. In Aguascalientes, Nissan has built a $2 billion factory. Together with an existing plant, it will produce a car every 30 seconds. About 80% of the parts are made in Mexico, and the use of local suppliers has guarded Mexican production against currency fluctuations. Many Mexican workers are well qualified, as well as cheap, and it is said that more engineers graduate in Mexico each year than in Germany (Wainwright 2012, p 239). In Guanajuato, Mazda and Honda have built factories and Audi a $1.3 billion plant in Puebla. In 2012, Mexico was expected to turn out roughly 3 million vehicles, making it the world’s fourth-biggest auto exporter (Wainwright 2012). In a number of other areas, Mexico’s prospects have also improved. Out-of-control population growth and an endless exodus of people north from the 1970s to the 1990s went into reverse from 2000, as the rewards for emigrating diminished and the risks increased. Moreover, there has been a dramatic decline in the birth rate: in the 1960s, Mexican women had an average of seven children each, while now, as a more modern middle class sees the advantage of having a small family, population growth has dropped to only 2.4, with further decreases predicted (Wainwright 2012, p 6). The government has offered family-planning services despite opposition from the Catholic Church. Forty years ago, there was one dependent (usually a child) for every worker. Today and for the next 20 years, the ratio of workers to dependents will be a very favorable 2:1. Much-reduced migration of young workers to the US will help with dependence rates. The country still has fairly strong population growth, however, so it is imperative that Mexico invests in education and training as the rate of industrialization increases. Although there is little doubt that the economic and demographic picture for the next 20 years looks bright for Mexico, Wainwright’s bullish appraisal of 2012 needs considerable qualification. The politics, governance, law and order, and above all social conditions prevailing in Mexico are disquieting. Wainwright admits that many Americans are gloomy about Mexico, and the Pentagon warned in 2009 that Mexico risked becoming a failed state (Wainwright 2012, p 10). There are enormous disparities in the standard of living, styles of governance, and enforcement of law and order among the 31 states: some are lacking in providing

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even the most basic services to their populations, banana republics, while others are prosperous, reasonably democratic, and well managed.

Oligarchic One-Party Rule We have described how the Mexican Revolution achieved some important goals for Mexico, giving it a nationalist pride and a degree of autonomy, most clearly manifested in the 1938 nationalization of its oil industry in spite of strong US opposition. Mexico also has a greater sense of direction, albeit veering from left to right in its tortuous economic, social, and political development as a nation. However, in 1968, the violently suppressed student riots (the Tlatelolco massacre) revealed that the revolution was now well and truly dead and the country experiencing a profound crisis, and it was abundantly clear that Mexico had become a single-party state run by an oligarchy. The experienced American political scientist Irving Horowitz described the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) party mechanism “becoming a political IBM system: balancing out the needs, requests and demands of different sectors.” Horowitz quoted Anderson and Cockcroft to characterize the Mexican polity as “a complicated system of exchanges between interest groups and an oligarchy that provides decisive and sometimes ruthless leadership.” As a result, Horowitz saw the “pillars of power… becoming uneven, and the possibility of tumultuous change … pressing” (Anderson and Cockcroft 1966, p 14). Like many Americans, Horowitz considered that the crisis in Mexico had not become apparent because the public sector of the economy has “become so powerful, bureaucratic and entrenched that it is even hard for a class such as the private industrial class to exercise any autonomous power.” This half-truth reflects right-wing bias against the public sector, although it is true that the fruitful relationship between the public sector and the “new group” of entrepreneurs that existed in 1930s in Mexico had sadly been lost. As is the case in many other Latin American countries, the political leaders of Mexico could learn a lot from the masterclass that President Romulo Betancourt demonstrated in Venezuela in the 1970s: the successful relationship between a relatively efficient bureaucracy, working closely with the modernizing democratic political party, in Venezuela’s case Acción Democrática.

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As in the case of Uruguay, Mexico reveals a particular deterioration of state power, or at least “its inability to define its power in any context other than that provided by the ruling party. The Mexican state does not have powers to act; the PRI does have such powers.” This type of situation, Horowitz concluded, where the party rather than the polity is endowed with legitimacy, could only be described as “quasilegitimacy” (Horowitz 1969). Today, 50 years after Horowitz’s evaluation, despite the brief interlude of Vicente Fox’s Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) government of 2000–2006 and Calderon’s of 2006–2012, nothing has changed. The PRI is as powerful as ever, and the new president, PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto, was inaugurated on December 1, 2012. Corrupt and incompetent governments have often held power in the past, characterized by cliques, patronage, bribery, and deal-making between oligarchs and groups with vested interests, though it has been agreed that conditions improved in the 1990s, when real political competition began and fairly clean elections occurred for over a decade. Electing politicians happens in a proper way, but unfortunately the Mexican Constitution, reflecting the fear that longer rule could lead to dictatorship like that of Porfirio Díaz before 1910, totally bans any consecutive reelection. Almost alone in the world, Mexico has devised this system, and it applies to anyone from president to local mayors (Wainwright 2012, p 16). Once elected, Mexican politicians have little reason to maintain the support of the public. It makes more sense to please party bosses, or unions, business or the media. Competent, honest politicians deserve a chance to be voted into serve a second term. It is said that the worst cases of corruption occur at the level of the states, which account for a large and growing proportion of government spending. Between 1989 and 2007, their share of the total national budget increased from a fifth to nearly half, yet in the same period their ability to raise their own revenue slipped from generating about a third to only a tenth (Wainwright 2012). It is important to develop a system to serve the voters, not their parties, and the governor’s performance too will only be properly scrutinized by congress members if they come up for reelection. Failure by the states is always rewarded with federal help, as the outgoing President Calderón pointed out. The federal system does not have the proper incentives built in: “the result is not federalism but feudalism“ (Wainwright 2012). In the first year of his presidency, Peña Nieto set a hectic pace, pushing through a host of reforms in education, telecommunications, and taxation, and even constitutional changes that enabled more private-sector

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participation in the state-owned energy company Pemex. Some rightwing strategists have noted that “if things go well, Peña Nieto could go down in history as one of the great reformers of the past 100 years,” while others, such as Pierpaolo Barbieri and Niall Ferguson (2013), write that the reforms put Mexico on the threshold of transforming itself “from Latin America’s laggard into North America’s new engine of growth.” Many people, especially workers, are very cynical about the controversial changes to the famous oil industry. The company is widely believed to be awash in corruption, and increasing numbers of workers choose to work for private contractors, under poorer conditions (Barbieri and Ferguson 2013). Generally, Mexican economists were much less optimistic than they were, and were waiting for legislation to make the reforms effective. While executive changes were good and much needed, it was generally accepted that most Mexicans would not see direct benefits, such as cheaper energy, for at least 18 months. GDP growth was only 1.3% in 2013, the security and drug crisis persisted, and poverty and inequality were rampant. Many saw the oil industry reforms as beneficial only to big companies. It is likely that Mexico’s already fractured society will become even more so, and that many people will become increasingly hostile to the latest edition of the old ruling party (McCrummen 2013).

Notes 1. The Popul Vuh, the “Book of the People,” or Sacred Book of the Quiché Maya, the most powerful nation of the Guatemalan highlands in preconquest times, is generally regarded as America’s oldest book. The Quiché Maya were a branch of the ancient Maya, whose remarkable civilization in pre-Columbian America is comparable to the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean. The Popul Vuh corresponds to the Christian Bible and is considered the most important of the five pieces of the great library treasures of the Maya that survived the Spanish Conquest. 2. Shifting Cultivation in Latin America (Rome: FAO; 1971), referring to David A Hill’s “The land question in explaining culture change: the case of San Bartolomé and Penola in Chiapas” (57th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Man, Miami, 1962) and The Changing Landscape of a Mexican Municipio: Villa Las Rosas, Chiapas (Chicago: University of Chicago; 1964). 3. Although new hybrid varieties, as used in the “Green Revolution,” on average produce considerably higher yields, they are usually much less

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resistant to extreme weather than the sturdy traditional varieties. As such, peasants planting new varieties might do so on only half, a third, a quarter, or less of their maize land and plant traditional varieties on the rest. Even if most of the crop destined for market is lost, the family can still survive if enough remains for their subsistence. Observers often wrongly criticize peasants for blandly “conforming to tradition” without recognizing strategies to minimize risk. 4. Among a large body of literature on the Zapatistas, see Andrés Fábregas Puig’s Chiapas: Cultures in Motion (Chiapas: Editorial Vientral Hombro; 2007), Ziga Vodovnik’s ¡Ya Basta! Ten Years of the Zapatista Uprising: Writings of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos (Oakland: AK Press; 2004), Gloria Muñoz Ramírez, Laura Carlsen, and Alejandro Reyes Arias’s The Fire and the Word: A History of the Zapatista Movement (San Francisco: City Lights Publishers; 2008), and Christina Hézar Gonzáles and Joan E Garcia’s Autonomía Zapatista: Otro Mundo Es Posible (Mexico: Arte, Música, y Video; 2008).

References Anderson B, Cockcroft JD. Co-option in Mexican politics. International Journal of Comparative Sociology. 1966;7(1):11–28. Barbieri P, Ferguson N. Mexico’s economic reform breakout. Wall Street Journal. 2013. https://www.wsj.com/articles/pierpaolo-barbieri-and-niall-fergusonmexico8217s-economic-reform-breakout-1388103730 Accessed August 3, 2015. Barkin D. The reconstruction of a modern Mexican peasantry. Journal of Peasant Studies. 2002;30(1):73–90. Collier GA. Fields of the Tzotzil: The Ecological Bases of Tradition in Highland Chiapas. Austin: University of Texas Press; 1975. Dresser D. Salinastroika Without Prisnost: Institutions, Coalition-Building, and Economic Reform in Mexico. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 1994. Friedman G. The Next 100 years: A Forecast for the 21st Century. New York: Doubleday; 2010. Gilly A. The last glow of the Mexican revolution. In: Hansen T (editor). The Zapatista Reader (pp 323–348). New York: Nation Books; 2002. Guiot J. Avendaño: sistema de extensión agrícola en las comunidades indígenas Tzeltales y Tzotziles de los altos de Chiapas. Texcoco, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma Chapingo; 1964. Guiteras Holmes C. Organización social de Tzeltales y Tzotziles. América Indígena. 1948;8(1):45–62. Hansen T. Zapatistas: A brief historical timeline. In: Hansen T (editor). The Zapatista Reader (pp 8–15). New York: Nation Books; 2002.

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Horowitz IL. The norm of illegitimacy: The political sociology of Latin America. In: Horowitz IL, de Castro J, Gerassi J (editors). Latin American Radicalism: A Documentary Report on Left and Nationalist Movements (pp 3–28). New York: Random House; 1969. Kaplan L. Man in Nature Project. Chicago: University of Chicago; 1956–1959. Mariaca R, Pérez J, León N, López A. La Milpa Tsotsil de los Altos de Chiapas y Sus Recursos Genéticos. San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico: Universidad Intercultural de Chiapas; 2007. McCrummen S. Mexico’s oil workers gather at the Plaza of Wailing to bemoan corruption and unpaid wages. Guardian Weekly. 2013. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/mexico-oil-ind ustry-reforms-pemex. Accessed August 26, 2020. Pozas R. Chamula: Un Pueblo Indio de los Altos de Chiapas. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional Indigenista; 1959. Ramírez GM, Carlsen L, Arias AR. The Fire and the Word: A History of the Zapatista Movement. San Francisco: City Lights; 2008. Recinos A. Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiche Maya. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press; 1950. Saliba F. Catholicism eclipsed in rebel Chiapas. April 13, 2012. Guardian Weekly: 31–32. Siverts H. Social and cultural changes in a Tzeltal (Mayan) municipio, Chiapas, Mexico. Paper presented at the 32nd International Conference of Americanists; Copenhagen; 1956. Tree I. Secret wars in the cloud forest—Chiapas. In: Tree I (editor). Sliced Iguana: Travels in Unknown Mexico (pp 166–218). London: Tauris Parke; 2007. Vicente RSG (Subcomandante Marcos). ¡Ya Basta! Ten Years of the Zapatista Uprising. Chico, CA: AK Press; 2004. Wagner PL. Natural and artificial zonation in a vegetation cover: Chiapas, Mexico. Geographical Review. 1962;52(2):253–274. Wainwright T. The rise of Mexico. Economist. 2012. Available at: https://www. economist.com/leaders/2012/11/24/the-rise-of-mexico. Accessed August 26, 2020. Watters RF. Shifting Cultivation in Latin America. Rome: FAO; 1971. Yúnez-Naude A, Paredes FB. The reshaping of agricultural policy in Mexico. In: Randall L (editor). Changing Structure of Mexico: Political, Social, and Economic Prospects (pp 213–235). 2nd ed. Abingdon, UK: Routledge; 2006.

CHAPTER 6

Recent Developments in Mexico: Can Mexico Remake Itself?

The story of Mexico echoes the land itself: an arduous landscape of volcanoes, some active, others silent, and peaks and valleys rising and falling like the country’s tumultuous history. In the nineteenth century, the waves of European imperialism and colonization broke over the lands of Mexico, and increasingly Mexican intellectuals and leaders began to imitate and follow the new European ideas of liberalism and positivism espoused by Ricardo, Spencer and Comte: the ideology of the European bourgeoisie in an age of new and expanding capitalist industrialization. However, this was a philosophy that was utterly inappropriate to Mexico, a false creed that offered nothing to Mexicans, and that broke its last links with its own past. Other thinkers in Mexico, like the author Carlos Fuentes, accepted this interpretation, varying it only slightly by using the analogy of Mexicans adopting various foreign masks to hide their true identity. The great Mexican Revolution of 1910, which ran to the late 1920s and thereafter continued in an institutional way, was a great revolution in the sense of the country finding its true self, arguing and evolving plans and policies that would grant social justice, bringing back lands for the disinherited and the poor, and restoring other basic human rights. Mexico is a land rich in natural resources, is blessed with strong family ties, and has a hardworking populace. Increasingly over the last few decades, the country has appeared to be ready to move from the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Watters, Rural Latin America in Transition, Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65033-9_6

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ranks of developing nations into a new role, this time as a more modern player on the world stage, but its development pattern viewed over time is rather a zigzag one. Although only one political party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) has wielded political power for over 90 years, the various governments are usually right wing or center right, or less frequently center left or left, varying according to the economic situation or current beliefs of the day. Hopes for a better future, however, have been severely tarnished through political corruption, civil unrest, environmental pollution, problems of intense urbanization, devaluation of the peso by the Mexican government, and serious debt problems. In recent years, tensions along the US–Mexican border have been exacerbated, where drug trafficking and illegal immigration rise each time the peso falls. Since 2017, US President Donald Trump has demanded that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) be reviewed and either abolished or amended to return considerably higher returns to the US and American companies. Moreover, Trump has taken a hard line on illegal Hispanic immigrants, especially Mexicans, who are estimated as being about 12 million in number. Being a neighbor to the US, the richest and most powerful country in the world, brings great advantages to Mexico, but also great peril and insecurity when relationships between the two are severely strained. However, Mexico is determined to remake itself every decade or so. When economic conditions are highly favorable, it makes notable advances, only to be followed some years later by serious downturns and setbacks. Then, it often attempts a painful rebirth of its economic policies. Mexico is a complex country that is often described as caught somewhere between a turbulent past and a promising future (Parfit 1996). In many ways, however, Mexico never seems to change. President Peña Nieto, of the PRI party, led structural reforms from 2012, finally allowing private foreign investors back into the oil sector. The economy boomed in northern Mexico and along the US border when manufacturing rapidly expanded for a period. However, other areas in the south and center languished. Peña Nieto deserves credit for trying to reform the education sector, lifting it from its backward state, but when Trump came on the scene, the Mexican public felt their president did not stand up to him. Corruption expanded rapidly, the murder rate exploded, and the overgrown bureaucracy needed slashing. During his presidency, the economy grew only by 2.5% (“Tropical messiah: How Andrés Manuel

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López Obrador will remake Mexico” 2018). Peña Nieto’s approval rating dropped steadily, due to widespread corruption and poor security.

A New Populist of the Pueblos In this situation, a new “populist of the pueblos” emerged as a serious challenge—Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The son of a shopkeeper, López Obrador, grew up in the small town of Tepetitán in the steamy heat of the tropical state of Tabasco. As he rose in local politics, his supporters gave him a new name, Peje, after the tough pejelagarto fish that swims in the surrounding swamps. When he grew up and became mayor of Mexico City, TV pundits called him “AMLO,” joining his initials together. On July 1, 2018, he earned another name—El Presidente—as the new leader of this nation of approximately 130 million. He beat his main rival, Ricardo Anaya of the center-right National Action Party, by a large margin, with two votes for every one of Anaya’s. This was a huge upheaval in Mexican politics, giving the country its first genuinely leftist leader since Lázaro Cárdenas in the 1930s, who expropriated oil from American and British companies. It also placed a leftist nationalist over the Rio Grande from Trump, who has promised to tear up trade deals with Mexico and erect a wall at the border to keep out “bad hombres.” As López Obrador’s career has blossomed, he has campaigned mainly in the pueblos —small towns and villages like his native Tepetitán—where he feels at home. It is here that López Obrador’s brand of leftist nationalism can best be understood. Many pueblos have been hit hard by the downside of globalization, their trades wiped out by factory-made imports, the farmers crushed by agribusiness, and their young taking the long trek to the US to undertake menial jobs or pick fruit in the blazing summer heat. In their plazas, López Obrador has promised crowds that he would revive the pueblos and their people, building roads, repairing schools, and paying for pensions and subsidies (Grillo 2018). After graduating from college with a degree in political science, López Obrador joined the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). However, as the PRI veered to more free-market policies, he broke away to help found the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party, rising to become mayor of Mexico City in 2000. His ambition to become president, however, was repeatedly thwarted. He lost his first run in 2006 by only 0.6% of the vote, after which he accused the government of fraud and

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backed blocking streets for months in protests. In 2012, he tried again, but lost to Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI by a wider margin of 6%. He then began taking his message directly to the people, visiting every one of Mexico’s 2,464 municipalities and building a vast network of grassroots support, like the famous left-wing president of the 1930s Lázaro Cárdenas. López Obrador’s cousin, Manuela Obrador, who was standing for federal deputy in Palenque, described how they set up committees in barrios, ranchos, and jungle villages. “He goes to the pueblos because the closeness to the people is what he is looking for,” she said. “He goes into the communities, he walks in them. That makes him different, that makes him sensitive. He really sees how the communities are.” Indeed, AMLO has clearly mastered the basics of becoming an effective politician, as well as a populist politician, through constantly visiting and talking to local people about their living conditions and views on how to improve their lives (Grillo 2018, p 10). López Obrador’s third run for the presidency in 2014 led him to form his own political party, the Movement for National Regeneration or MORENA, an acronym that also means “dark-skinned woman.” This move sends a subtle message to most Mexicans, who tend to be darkerskinned, while the wealthy elite are often whiter. The political scientist Federico Estévez points out, “[T]his is very clever marketing. He doesn’t need to say anything, but the argument is there, playing on identity politics” (Phillips and Agren 2018, pp 6, 12, 20–22). Clearly, his constant visits to local communities (akin to relentless door-knocking in elections in most countries) paid off, with recognition by voters that he was very serious and determined to try to improve life in Mexico for the great masses of poor and distressed people. The masses could see he was a very committed political leader (although he had a good sense of humor, too). As López Obrador built his network of grassroots support into a popular movement, disenchantment with Peña Nieto’s government blossomed. López Obrador tells crowds he aspires to be a Mexican president like the revered historical figures Benito Juárez, Francisco I. Madero, and Cárdenas. He says he will pay for his promised social programs by eliminating corruption and slashing bureaucracy. He states he will sell the executive air fleet, and instead travel by land or commercial jet. He plans to tackle drug violence by inviting Pope Francis to Mexico to help work out a peace plan. He intends to move out of the presidential palace (“it has bad vibes”) and settle in an older building closer to the people in the central Zocalo at the heart of Mexico City.

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One of his major ideas is to provide more subsidies for small farmers so that they can compete better with American imports, such as maize, and make Mexico more food self-sufficient. He has stopped short of calling for a trade war with the US in response to Trump raising tariffs, saying he agrees with him that Mexican workers should be paid more. Mexico is the third-largest trading partner of the US, with $557 billion worth of cross-border commerce in 2017. López Obrador has pledged “to reach an understanding” with Trump amid uncertain times that must achieve consensus on everything from contentious trade talks to cooperation on security and migration. How radical a President López Obrador will turn out to be is a matter of intense debate in Mexico, as indeed it is around the world. Some call him a change for good, others see him as a messianic Chavista. But Estévez says fears he is like Chávez or there will be a Chavista Venezuelastyle crisis are overblown. “In American terms, he is a Bernie Sanders,” he says (Phillips and Agren 2018). There does appear, however, to be a redline warning in his opposition to the very valuable education reforms that were initiated by the previous administration of Peña Nieto. López Obrador refused to accept his first two presidential losses, and in 2006 his supporters set up a protest camp that caused months of chaos in downtown Mexico City, but he has pointedly sought to reassure his respect for the constitution, private property, and individual rights. Although he vows to eradicate endemic corruption, he has promised there will be no expropriations. Estevez has said that he does not concede that all populism is undemocratic in its nature: “When you have a long generation of elite failures, you need to nudge the way to change things.” Although Trump and López Obrador represent the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, each belongs to a group of politicians who present politics as a conflict between elites and the people whom they claim to represent. Many academics see populists as a danger to democracy, noting the swing to authoritarianism in such countries as Turkey, Venezuela, and the Philippines. López Obrador responds by saying his elite critics do not understand the movement he has built: “They don’t even know what populism is … they fail to define it conceptually” (Phillips and Agren 2018). There is no doubt that the problems Mexico faces, such as corruption, the drug trade, cartels, endemic violence, and a very high murder rate are deep-seated, recalcitrant ones enormously difficult to solve. They also exist in Brazil and a considerable number of other Latin American

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societies, such as Colombia. While he was mayor of Mexico City, the water crisis in that rapidly expanding megalopolis was steadily growing more serious. López Obrador did not solve that problem, which is getting steadily worse today. He may not solve many of the other problems either, but at least he seems to be a determined man and a good man, and at this time in history, fortunately, he is gathering a good team of advisors and specialists. That includes prominent businessman Alfonso Romo, a friend of Carlos Slim, one of the world’s wealthiest people, Santiago Levy of the Inter-American Development Bank, and widely respected politician Tatiana Clouthier, formerly a member of Anaya’s conservative party, which apparently signals that nobody should fear López Obrador’s promise of “profound change” (“Tropical messiah: How Andrés Manuel López Obrador will remake Mexico” 2018, p 22). An estimated 89 million voters had voted for change and to reject the only two parties to hold the presidency since the end of one-party rule in 2000. López Obrador vowed to repay the trust put in him by millions of Mexicans: “I will govern with rectitude and justice. I will not fail you. I will not disappoint you. I won’t betray the people.” He went on: “We will listen to everyone. We will care for everyone. We will respect everyone. But we will give priority to the most humble and the forgotten.” AMLO denounced Trump’s action in separating children from parents of migrant families in the US as arrogant, racist, and inhumane, though he stressed the US and Mexico are joined at the hip and need to work together (“Tropical messiah: How Andrés Manuel López Obrador will remake Mexico” 2018, p 22).

Rapid Urbanization During the period of rapid economic growth in Mexico of 2011–2012, the spirit in industrial development led to massive foreign investment, with many larger factories being built in northern states and along the Rio Grande, boosting urban expansion. Mexico City has grown far more rapidly than any other city, becoming a veritable megalopolis. Priscilla Connelly, an urban sociologist who has lived in Mexico City since the 1970s, has seen it triple in size and grow into one of the world’s five largest cities. In 2015, Mexico City’s population reached 20 million. Increasingly, according to the UN, much of humanity is young, fertile, and urban. Latin America’s average age is 29 years (Connelly 2018).

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Mexico City is vastly overcrowded, massively polluted, and predominantly poor, with little space to build the 50,000 new houses a year it needs, but it shows that rapid change can be controlled and that urbanization has its benefits (Connelly 2018). “There has been progress in so many ways,” Connelly says, “Most people can now read and are housed. They don’t expect to die at five. All in all, it’s been a successful transition, though fraught with future environmental risk” (Connelly 2018). Planning and thinking were geared to the idea that cars could circulate. Only 30% of residents in Mexico City have a car, but the city was designed for vehicles. The nineteenth-century sanitary revolution has to be rethought, but the environmental impacts of urbanization are much worse outside cities. The shantytowns that ringed Mexico City in the 1970s are now being upgraded. However, environmental issues are still not high on the agenda, and as described herein, the city has a semipermanent water crisis. “Water will be the crunch issue here,” Connelly says. “Will there be enough? Probably not. People will have to reduce consumption. It will need more aggressive policies. Cities must think about the whole water cycle. In 50 years’ time, wastewater will be like gold” (Connelly 2018). Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay led the urbanization of Latin America. Latin America is the world’s most urbanized region, with 90% of people living in towns and cities (Connelly 2018).

Mexico Is a Complex Country Shaping Its Own Future With land of almost 2 billion km2 , Mexico is a country like no other. In the far north, it has broad desert valleys between two mountain ranges: the Sierra Madre Oriental and the Sierra Madre Occidental. Farther south, lumpy highlands of the central mesa rise between multiple ranges and cool valleys punctuated by volcanoes. South of that the terrain is hilly between a few valley routes descending to the swampy Tehuantepec isthmus, beyond which the hills are clothed by rainforests (James 1959). Mexico is especially rich in natural resources. Apart from silver and gold, the country has substantial oil and natural-gas supplies. About half the latter keep the country running, and the rest is exported, mainly to the US. Family ties are especially strong—Mexicans are warm and friendly. Illegal settlers in the US value family links so highly that many take the risk of capture when they return home, often annually at Christmas or other

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important times to be with their loved ones for a while before making the hazardous journey north again. The dramatic terrain and multiple climates played a role in creating so many intricate civilizations and different social groups that fought over land, water, and slaves. Lesley Byrd Simpson’s book Many Mexicos is indeed appropriately named. In this country of wildly differing places, the traveler can see differences that are environmental, geographical, biological, historical, ethnic, and cultural. This ancient realm of landscape, religion, culture, and family is deeply loved by the people. In an era of chameleon politics and untrustworthy politicians, at least these basic things will remain. Ordinary Mexicans’ love of place, background, and identity is rooted in geography and time: these things give strength to Mexicans and the nation. Mexico has three ethnic divisions. People of European descent make up about 10% of the population and tend to be among the wealthy elite. At the other end of the income scale are the remaining full-blooded Indians who comprise about a third of the population, and who live mostly in southern Mexico. The rest of the population dominates: 55 or 60% consists of mestizos, people of mixed Spanish and Indian blood. Within the blood of Mexicans run the civilizations of the ancient Olmec, Maya, and Aztec, as well as the Spanish, who for centuries hungered to find and possess the great mineral riches of the Americas. Octavio Paz, the nation’s Nobel Prize–winning author, describes daily life as a “celebration of contrasts.” Mexicans, he says, “delight in decorations, carelessness and pomp, negligence, passion and reserve.” Life is “deep and desperate,” and the Mexican, drawing on the conflict of origins in the blood, is filled with great emotions. Life is also personal: you see this every day, in business, in friendships. A handshake is a deal as strong as a signature in blood (Parfit 1996). Mexico has a rich culture. The Roman Catholic Church dominates spiritual life, but in Mexico its rituals, like the candles and candy skulls of the Day of the Dead are imbued, with indigenous traditions (Photos 6.1 and 6.2). In recent years, as documented herein, in some areas, such as Chiapas in southern Mexico, ordinary peasant villagers have revolted against the dominant extortionist leaders and caciques who are often expelling them from the community. They are increasingly turning away from Catholicism and giving up drinking the local firewater, preferring instead American Pentecostal churches that pump out rousing hallelujahs. Some are even becoming Muslims.

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Photo 6.1 Holy week of Easter at San Juan, Chamula. Villagers have hung a dummy in front of the door, reflecting Christ’s crucifixion, Chiapas state

Although NAFTA has been a great boon to Mexico as a whole, poverty is still very widespread. The poor of the teeming cities are the Indians and peasants of the south, including Oaxaca and Chiapas, and have been growing restless. The emergence and survival of the Zapatistas is a desperate but understandable plea for recognition of their right to their land, their human rights, and socioeconomic and political autonomy. Civil unrest has returned, environmental standards are not strong, and pollution is widespread. The decline of the then-only political party, the PRI, began in 1968, when the army killed more than 200 students during an understandable demonstration on social reform. The nation was shocked to the core. Then, in 1982 Mexico almost went bankrupt when its debt reached

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Photo 6.2 An elderly man shows his shock and despair at the reenactment of Christ’s death and sacrifice, Chiapas state

US$80 billion, and only the combined efforts of many countries and major banks in a consortium saved it. In 1985, a huge earthquake killed 10,000 people in Mexico City. The government’s response was slow and inefficient. Although when Mexico joined NAFTA in 1994, trade steadily expanded, leading to a growing middle class, on the day the treaty was signed, the Zapatista Indians in Chiapas rebelled. The PRI’s presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta was assassinated by a factory worker who claimed to be acting alone, although conspiracy theories were rife. Investors from abroad and Mexican businessmen lost confidence in Mexico, forcing the new president, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, to devalue the peso. A severe recession followed, lasting for several years.

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Salinas’s once shining image as an economic reformer was tarnished when it was revealed that his brother had spirited over $100 million from the nation’s treasury. Although there are many positives about Mexico and Mexicans, the negatives are truly awful and among the worst in the world. In May 2017, it was reported that Mexico in 2016 was the seconddeadliest country in the world, more violent than such war zones as Afghanistan or Yemen, with a death rate surpassed only by Syria’s (Agren 2017). A decade of drug-war violence is the main factor, but the government claimed that it was far from being among the worst in the world. It pointed to UN figures on Mexico’s homicide rate being more accurate: 16.4 murders per 100,000 residents, significantly lower than several other Latin American countries, including Brazil (25.2), Venezuela (53.7), and Honduras (90.4). When the new president, Felipe Calderón, declared war on organized crime and drug gangs around 2007, employing the army, horrific violence and the death rate escalated. The struggle claimed 200,000 lives, with 30,000 left missing, but large areas of the country were unaffected and tourists visits even grew. There is no doubt that much of the violence (estimated at about half of all murders) is linked to US demand for illegal drugs and the black market in firearms, neither of which are likely to be stopped by a border wall. The challenge Mexico faces in this area is huge: in many ways, it is comparable to that of a civil war, reaching a level akin to armed conflict. This involves the northern triangle of Central America (Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and especially Mexico). The first two months of 2017 were the most violent January and February on record, with 3,779 homicides and over 35,000 displaced persons. Most of the blame can be attributed to state weakness, corruption, and militarization of the gangs, who also fight each other to dominate the drug trade. Estimates are rather rough, but probably half of Mexican homicides are thought not to be related to drug trafficking (Agren 2017). In 2017, President Trump demanded a thorough review of NAFTA, claiming it was not returning sufficient benefits to the US. The future relationship between the new countries looked to be in peril, and they say that each time the peso falls in value, drug trafficking, and illegal migration rise. Fortunately, however, after about a year of rugged negotiations among the US, Mexico, and Canada, a new trade deal was finally agreed, including a renaming United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA).

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Misallocation and Poor Productivity in Mexican Industries From 1996 to 2015, Mexico’s per capita GDP growth averaged only 1.2% per year. Moreover, this poor figure overstates the position, because of the country’s demographic transition: its labor force grew more rapidly than its population during these years (2.2% versus 1.4%). In fact, GDP per worker grew on average by only 0.4% on an annual basis (Levy 2018). Regional comparisons over the same two decades showed per capita GDP growth in Mexico was only 25.7%, less than any country in Latin America except Venezuela. Two premises have dominated public policy in Mexico in the last two decades. One is that in a context of macroeconomic stability and an open-trade regime, Mexico needs to increase investment in physical capital and improve the education of its workforce, in order to increase efficiency and create better-paid jobs with social-insurance benefits and labor protection. The second premise is that while some of these jobs are created, the country needs to enhance social inclusion through programs to provide social insurance to workers who cannot obtain it through their job, programs to transfer income in cash or kind, exemptions to consumption taxes, and special tax regimes and other measures to help entrepreneurs running small firms. The main argument of Santiago Levy’s book, which serves as the foundation for the subsequent sections, is that the two premises are inconsistent—that the persistent misallocation of resources is the main cause for the very poor, sluggish productivity (Levy 2018). He concludes that misallocation is viewed as the outcome of policies and institutions that through various channels affect the behavior of entrepreneurs and workers in ways that limit productivity. Policies and institutions detrimental to productivity—especially those associated with relations between entrepreneurs and workers, and taxation—are deeply ingrained in Mexico’s political discourse and very hard to change. Inefficient policies and malfunctioning institutions persist, partly as a result of long-held views (Levy 2018). The book argues two points: • Misallocation is the central part of the explanation of why productivity and growth in Mexico have stagnated. • Misallocation results from policies and institutions that affect the decisions of entrepreneurs, and factors that are detrimental to productivity and not from underlying shortcomings in workers’

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characteristics or abilities (in terms of risk-taking, saving, effort, inventiveness, education, or disposition to work, learn, or innovate). The number of firms in Mexico is surprisingly high. Differences in productivity among them are very large, even if we compare firms producing almost the same product. At one extreme are world competitors, using the most advanced technologies and management practices with thousands of workers distributed over many establishments across the country, and sometimes across the globe. At the other extreme are firms in a single establishment with two or three workers using simple technologies and primitive management practices, and at times carrying out their activities on the streets and avenues of the country’s cities (Levy 2018). The book establishes key facts about characteristics of firms in Mexico: size, legal status, contractual agreements with workers, location, sector of activity, and access to credit. In parallel, it also develops firm-level measures of productivity. It then asks if there are any systematic patterns between firm characteristics and firm productivity, and whether these patterns are constant over time. In parallel, the book studies how capital and labor are allocated across firms and how these allocations change as firms enter the market, exit, grow, or contract. Are there changes in resource allocation? Resource misallocation leads to productivity losses. Misallocation results from flawed policies and not functioning institutions (Levy 2018, pp 22–23). There is a clear ranking of firms” productivity levels depending on firms” contractual structure. Firms that hire salaried workers legally are on average the most productive, followed by those that mix salaried and unsalaried workers (i.e., fully formed and mixed firms). Finally, the least productive firms are those that have only unsalaried workers (informal and legal). These findings hold after controlling for firm size, location, and age, as well as across time (Levy 2018). Productivity differences within informal firms are very large. Firms with unsalaried contracts are the most numerous, and since they are the ones that attract a significant share of capital and labor, they are the ones most responsible for pulling down Mexico’s aggregate productivity (Levy 2018, p 25). Levy finds that the positive effects on productivity from resource reallocation within surviving firms are more than offset by the negative effects of the entry and survival of low-productivity firms, and by the exit of

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high-productivity ones. It is as if in Mexico, the Schumpeterian process of “creative destruction” was countered by a parallel process of destructive creation: a vicious circle. He documents that the exit of high-productivity firms caused the loss of high-productivity jobs and the entry of lowproductivity firms the creation of low-productivity jobs (Levy 2018, pp 30–32). Soberingly, in Mexico over the last two decades, more human capital did not translate into higher productivity. Human capital was accumulated in a context of large and growing misallocation. Reasons for misallocations arise when there is underutilization of the education that workers acquire prior to their entry into the labor force. The dysfunctional firm dynamics associated with misallocation reduce worker opportunities to accumulate human capital once they complete their schooling and are in the labor force. High firm-entry and -exit rates imply large firm-induced labor turnover. To the extent that the incentives to invest in education depend on the returns that are obtained from doing so, and given that misallocation lowers these returns, Mexican workers invest less in education prior to entering the labor force (Levy 2018, p 34). This chapter documents that the returns to Mexico are not only lower than in other countries of the OECD but also lower than in Chile and Brazil. Another key factor was China’s entry was a major shock to Mexican firms, as it represented more competition in Mexico than the US, the country’s main export market. The “China shock“ reduced formal employment in manufacturing by about 5–7%, with a similar increase in informal employment. The shock was transitory, with effects dissipating by the end of 2008 (Levy 2018). Mexico’s investment rate is currently around the mean of Latin American countries, but below that of the fast-growing East Asian nations. Over the two decades considered, the investment rate in Mexico increased about 2.5 percentage points of GDP, yet productivity stagnated. Many investment projects in Mexico were carried out because the environment made them privately profitable, not because they were productive. As with education, the efforts made to invest more were under rewarded. Fukuyama in 1995 emphasized the critical role played by trust and social capital in the development of successful economies and the birth of the large firm. The relationship between trust and the size and type of firms is underemphasized in Mexico, particularly as it pertains to the

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presence and persistence of small firms where all the participants are relatives (family firms). This type of firm is the most common one in Mexico (Levy 2018, p 57). Data are gathered only on fixed premises, with walls and a roof. Street vendors or mobile street markets are excluded, as are agriculture, livestock, poultry, and related activities, as well as localities of fewer than 2,500 people. All data are from the censuses of 1998, 2003, 2008, and 2013. Also used is Mexico’s employment survey. Eleven million workers worked in localities with 2500 or more inhabitants. Those working in an establishment without fixed premises or in a locality with fewer than 2,500 inhabitants numbered 4.7 million. Employment in establishments excluded from the census is substantially more informal. Employment in agriculture is mostly informal. The trend toward increased firm informality is common to all three sectors (manufacturing, commerce, and services). Between the censuses of 1998 and 2013, the composition of employment became more polarized, although on average there was a shift toward more informality. Moreover, employment in smaller establishments grew substantially more than in larger ones. Employment in informal and illegal establishments also grew more than the average, indicating an increase in firms” illegal behavior (Levy 2018, p 88) (Table 6.1). Allocation of capital also became more polarized. In fully formal establishments, it grew more than employment, indicating that they became more capital-intensive. In very small, informal establishments, illegal ones’ allocation of capital grew substantially more than legal ones (Levy 2018, p 89). When the Economic Census and Employment Survey data are combined, we have a picture of an economy in which close to half of all Table 6.1 Changes in composition of nonagricultural workforce between 2000 and 2013 2000

2013

Of 29.1 million workers, 52% were employed in informal firms 49% of employees were self-employed or worked in establishments of up to five workers

Of 37.7 million workers, 58% were employed in informal firms 55% of workers were self-employed or worked in establishments of up to 5 workers

From Levy (2018)

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Table 6.2 Productivity gains, 1998–2018

All Manufacturing Commerce Services

1998

2003

2008

2018

1.63 0.88 1.75 1.51

1.58 0.89 1.78 1.62

1.72 0.95 1.99 1.85

2.48 1.26 2.93 2.02

Note Watters’s calculations based on data from Mexico’s Economic Census (INEGI)

workers in manufacturing, services, and commerce are employed in firms with at most five workers (Table 6.2). A key point is that over time, manufacturing has attracted a smaller share of resources: in 1998, it absorbed 35.9% of all labor and 45.9% of capital stock, but by 2013 these shares had fallen to 28.3 and 40.3%, respectively. Resources have shifted toward commerce and services. The trend to increased firm formality is common to all three sectors (manufacturing, commerce, and service). Misallocation is persistent and increased slightly between 1998 and 2013. The significant difference in the productivity of resources across firms is not a transient phenomenon, but rather a structural feature of Mexico’s economy. Despite many policy changes over these 15 years, these elements have not only persisted but deepened (Levy 2018). The central result is that for all four censuses, and regardless of whether physical or revenue productivity is considered, all firm types were on average less productive than fully formal ones. Table 4.3 reveals that the differences in productivity between mixed and fully formal firms are small, and that mixed firms are also (with one exception) always more productive than informal firms, legal, or illegal. These two results imply that in the case of Mexico, resources are on average more valuable in formal firms (legal and mixed) than in informal firms. Put differently, these results document that misallocation in Mexico results in too much informality. Something in Mexico’s environment impedes formal firms from absorbing more resources. Alternatively, something in Mexico’s environment channels too much capital and labor to informal firms (Levy 2018, pp 111–112; Tables 4.2 and 4.3). Given Mexico’s environment within a five-year period 58% of all entrants will either die or survive as low-productivity firms. Shares of capital and labor absorbed by high-productivity firms fell between 2008

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and 2013, while shares absorbed by low-productivity firms increased. Too many of the additional resources available between 2008 and 2013 were channeled to new firms and not enough to the growth of existing firms. There is evidence that these patterns, particularly the one associated with little firm growth, have been present in Mexico over longer time spans, and their impact on productivity is substandard. Hsieh and Klenow compared the dynamics of Mexican and US manufacturing firms. They found that given a firm’s size at birth, over a 40-year period the average firm in Mexico that survives increases its size by a factor of two, while a firm in the US does so by a factor of seven. Hsieh and Klenow estimated that over time, this difference in growth patterns lowers the productivity of Mexican manufacturing relative to that of the US by about 25% (Levy 2018, p 154). Dysfunctional firm dynamics are at the heart of Mexico’s productivity problem. “Firm churn” could be a good thing, but some of it is useless. Entering firms are no better than the firms they replace. Improvements in education levels have been significant over the last 25 years. Junior high school attendance increased from 49 to 85% from 1990 to 2015 and from senior high school and university from 23 to 65% and 13 to 33%, respectively. More generally, Székely and Flores showed that over the last two decades, educational advancement exceeded the average of Latin American countries. Between 1996 and 2015, rates of growth of workers with completed senior high school or university education substantially exceeded the rate of growth of the whole labor force: 6.2% for senior high and 4.4% for university education versus 2.3% growth of the labor force. By 2015, the labor force had on average almost ten years of schooling, two more years than in 1996 (Levy 2018; Table 4.1). In both 2000 and 2015, the standardized tests of the OECD were widely used to measure education quantity in junior high schools in mathematics, reading, and sciences. All countries in Latin America, including Mexico, ranked significantly lower than participating countries from other regions. However, over the last 16 years, Mexico’s scores on all three tests have increased, and moreover Mexico’s improvement exceeds the average of Latin American countries (Levy 2018, p 167). However, the connection between more educated workers and higher productivity is not automatic, because it is mediated by the environment, which may misallocate those more educated workers. Firm size matters, because larger firms tend to have more complex production technologies, more hierarchical organization within the firm, and more relationships with other firms or the government, in turn requiring

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more lawyers, accountants, engineers, personnel managers, and financial analysts than smaller firms. Further, because larger firms invest more in terms of research and development than smaller ones, they need more workers with degrees in chemistry, physics, biology, computer science, or mathematics. Regardless of the specificity of various models and numerical exercises, the issue is very simple: when because of the environment there are too many small low-productivity firms with simple technologies and too few larger and more productive firms with more complex processes, the demand for workers with more years of education is depressed, and so are their wages. The Bobba et al. 2017 model reproduces two salient features of Mexico’s labor market: the large overlap in formal and informal wage distribution, and the large transition rates observed between formal and informal jobs. The critical point made by Bobba et al. is that the dual nature of the Mexican social-insurance system taxes high-productivity matches between firms and workers and subsidizes low-productivity ones. Using Mexican employment-survey data, the model focuses on decisions made by young people at a critical juncture: to abandon school after completing junior high school, or to continue studying and complete senior high school. The main result is that the dual-insurance system has a strong influence on a worker’s schooling decisions. In the benchmark equilibrium, 60% of workers in the labor force complete junior high school, and 40% complete senior high school, but when the system of implicit taxes and subsidies associated with the dual system is eliminated, the proportion of workers in the labor force who complete senior high increases to 70%. This result suggests that the dual system is very costly in terms of workers’ incentives to invest in education. Moreover, in the simulated equilibrium, the value of total output increases by 17%. A more educated labor force increases the underlying productivity of the economy (Levy 2018, p 189). Policies, institutions, and misallocation all combine along with the insufficient data and an imperfect understanding of how the economy works. The issue is, simply put, too complex. Outcomes of Levy’s Chapters 3–5 can be summarized in four “stylized factors”: • Stylized factor 1 Mexico’s environmental (E), including labor (L)– entrepreneur–worker relations, taxation (T), and market (M), conditions allocate too many resources to firms with unsalaried contracts

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relative to firms with salaried contracts, and within the latter, to those that violate applicable labor and social-insurance regulations. • Stylized factor 2 Mexico’s E (LTM) induces the dispersion of production in smaller firms. The excess of small firms leads to too many individuals participating in economic activity as entrepreneurs or as self-employed, rather than as workers in firms. • Stylized factor 3 Mexico’s E (LTM) favors the entry of new firms and deters the growth of existing ones, even if incumbents have higher productivity. In parallel, it allows the survival of lowproductivity firms and the exit of high-productivity ones. • Stylized factor 4 Despite important reforms to various elements of Mexico’s E (LTM) over the last two decades, dysfunctional firm dynamics accentuated the outcomes in 1 and 2 above. These factors do not account for all facets of misallocation but they “capture the ones at the core of Mexican productivity problems” (Levy 2018, p 192). The interplay between the policies regulating benefits to salaried workers and the functioning of the institutions providing those benefits result in an implicit tax on salaried contracts of approximately 12%. Bobba, Flabbi, and Levy state that this is akin to a pure tax: something that must be paid for between workers and entrepreneurs when they agree on a salaried relation, with no benefit to either in return. Therefore, the policies and institutions discussed punish firms and workers with salaried contracts, so all else being equal, they will try to avoid these contracts whenever possible. This behavior is consistent with stylized factor 1. In Mexico, productivity costs are increased because firms cannot legally dismiss workers when demand falls or there is labor-saving technical innovation. These are considered unjust causes for dismissal in Mexican legislation. Workers have the right to sue firms for such dismissals, and if they win, the right to choose between being compensated or reinstated in their job. “Just causes are associated with flaws in worker behaviour” (Levy 2018, pp 198–200). Further consideration is taxation and taxation of firms. So in 2013, revenue from personal income tax on salaried workers was 2.5% of GDP compared to 0.1% from unsalaried workers. The Services de Administración Tributaria collects over 90% of revenue. In most states, tax rates are in the 2–2.5% range. The Services de Administración Tributaria faces the same problem as other agencies that collect taxes face: the smaller the

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firm, the harder it is to collect their tax (they evade it), and on the other hand, the larger the firm is, the harder it is for them to evade paying their taxes. Many more salaried workers have no fixed place of work, and even if they do, their earnings are more difficult to measure than the easily observed wages. The upshot is that the policies and institutions associated with labor taxation reinforce the effects that dismissal and social-insurance policies and associated institutions have on the size and type distribution of firms: a bias toward firms with unsalaried contracts, which tend to be small, and a bias toward firms with illegal salaried contracts, which for evasion reasons also tend to be small (Levy 2018, p 210). Mexico’s corporate income tax has important implications for the size distribution of firms and indirectly for the type of distribution. In principle, all firms are subject to the same tax schedule under what is called the “general regime.” However, the law contains a special regime for small firms known as the Repco (Régimen de Pequeños Contribuyentes). The Repco applies to firms with annual revenues of up to 2 million pesos in 2013 (approximately US$100,000). Rather than paying corporate taxes at the general rate, firms instead only have to pay 2% on the value of revenues. Levy gives an example of the significant savings that accrue to a firm under the Repco regime. A firm with sales of 1 million pesos and costs of materials and labor of 700,000 pesos has before-tax profits of 300,000 pesos. Because sales are below the Repco threshold, the firm has to pay only 2% of sales in taxes, or 20,000 pesos, resulting in after-tax profits of 280,000 pesos. However, under the general regime, where taxes are 30% of profits, the firm would have paid 90,000 pesos in taxes and made 210,000 pesos in after-tax profits. Clearly, Repco is very attractive, as after-tax profits are 33% higher (Levy 2018, p 212). A major, broad conclusion of the book is that misallocation in Mexico results from the interaction of many policies and institutions at the same time, and there is no single cause. Many policies need to change to increase productivity in Mexico. Mexico carried out many reforms to increase efficiency during the two decades covered by this book; however, misallocation increased between 1998 and 2013. Why did this happen? Dysfunctional firm dynamics implied that by the end of the period, more resources were allocated to firms with unsalaried contracts relative to those with salaried contracts, while average firm size fell and illegal behavior increased.

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Chapter 8 discusses policy changes that contributed to increasing misallocation and were strong enough to more than affect the effects of efficiency-increasing reforms. The policy changes discussed here may be motivated by sound objectives, such as expanding the coverage of social insurance, fiscal objectives, such as increasing revenue, or other considerations, such as promoting small firms. Between 1996 and 2015, there was a shift in resources of 3.24% of GDP in the direction of taxing salaried and subsidizing unsalaried labor (Levy 2018, p 256). The direct effect of this shift was to induce firms and workers to opt for unsalaried or illegal salaried contracts, i.e., to increase firm informality. “At the end of the day,” Levy concludes, “total factor productivity stagnated.” When China entered the World Trade Organization in 2000, it was a negative shock to firms in Mexico, as they felt the effects of much greater competition. Blyde et al. found that manufacturing in Mexico fell by about 7% and its composition changed, increasing the proportion of informal employees. Artec, Felderman, and Rojas estimated a decline of 5%, as well as a trend to more informal employment. Chinese competition was felt especially between 1998 and 2003, but by 2013 it had largely dissipated (Levy 2018, pp 256–258). The author Santiago Levy answers this question why is it that in a context of macroeconomic stability and an open-trade and investment regime, productivity has failed to grow in Mexico? The general view is that Mexico’s macroeconomic management has overall been sound, and on balance the nation has benefited by integrating into the world economy, yet some surprising anomalies still exist. The provision of better and more infrastructure should benefit both formal and informal firms. However, why is the formal/informal composition of firms in Mexico City, the fifth-largest city in the world and easily the largest urban conglomerate in the country, so different from the informal: formal ratio of firms in the country as a whole? Another answer is that there is uncompetitive behavior in key sectors of the economy, such as telecommunications and energy, and this is also a source of misallocation (Levy 2018, p 362). In 1910, the Mexican Revolution broke out to rid the country of the oppressive dictator Porfirio Díaz and hopefully to build a nation in which all classes and ethnicities could have access to land, jobs, and liberty. A central feature of the constitution that emanated from it in 1917 was a strong mandate to promote social welfare through various means, such

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as land redistribution, universal and free basic education, and detailed provisions on workers’ rights. These provisions reflected an ideal, but also reflected beliefs about the efficiency of the specific policies deployed to reach that ideal. The constitution was promulgated in 1917, and article 123, which was the key provision related to labor, reflected in part the abuses and grievances suffered by Mexican workers prior to the revolution. However, it also reflected the ideological debates being waged worldwide at that time regarding the need for public intervention to protect workers, and equally importantly, the specific policies required to pursue these objectives. One belief was that firms were obliged to pay for the social insurance of their workers as an effective policy to redistribute income in their favor, which protected them from illness, disability, and other risks. As Levy says, “… as a by-product of this belief, Mexico’s social insurance system was born truncated, completely dependent on the salaried status of workers.” Indeed, this was made clear in the inaugural address on December 1, 1940, by President Avila Camacho when he said, “… we should all pursue the good, to which I shall devote my full energies, that soon social security laws protect all Mexicans ” (Levy’s emphasis). Another belief was that firms should be severely restricted from having the ability to dismiss workers. This was seen to be an effective policy to bring about job stability and ensure workers’ permanent access to social insurance and other workrelated benefits. These beliefs were reflected in various laws, which in turn led to the creation of key institutions, such as labor tribunals (Juntas de Conciliación y Arbitraje), the social-security institute (Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social), and the housing institute (Instituto Mexicano del Fondo para la Viviendo de los Trabajadores). Another belief implicit in this case was that these policies and associated institutions would not hinder the expansion of salaried employment. Beliefs and intentions notwithstanding, at the end of the day wage-based contributory programs can only apply to workers employed by firms that pay wages, and dismissal regulations can only apply to subordinated workers who can be dismissed by the firms that employ them. It is indeed a paradox that a system devised for social inclusion has ended up excluding more than half the labor force! Levy refers to another study by Kaplan and Levy in 2014 that reviewed the origins of social insurance in Latin America and found that a comparable situation can be observed in other countries of the region (Levy 2018, p 266).

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Levy does note, however, how valuable recent reforms have been in telecommunications and education. The monopoly position of stateowned enterprises in energy was ended and the sector opened up to domestic and foreign private investment. Also, a parallel reform was launched to increase the quality of basic education through improved mechanisms for teacher selection and promotion. They are indeed profound and welcome changes, but more are needed. Levy notes that market concentration in banking and nonbanking sectors is one of the reasons behind the low level of credit to firms and its misallocation toward larger but not necessarily more productive ones (Levy 2018, p 271). Moreover, in the years ahead, Mexico will experience population aging, which will increase pressures to expand the scope of pension, health, and other social benefits. Looking ahead, it is crucial that Mexico rethinks its priorities. The last decade of the millennium was indeed costly for Mexico. Despite this, the country subsequently set a course to promote growth based on macroeconomic stability, an open-trade regime, low-inflation investments in human capital, promotion of domestic competition, and sector-specific reforms to increase efficiency. Also, the country deepened existing programs and launched new ones that increased social inclusion. New poverty programs were implemented, while health, pension, housing, day care, and other programs that focused on informal workers were created or expanded. The result of all these improvements will clearly be numerous and increasingly generous social programs, which will result in better jobs, higher wages, and more opportunities for all—growth with social inclusion. In spite of all these real gains, Levy asserts that “… however, almost a quarter of a century later, it is not possible to assert that this program delivered the growth and prosperity expected from it.” Of course, this does not mean that it should be abandoned—far from it. Most of its components were right on the mark and needed to be consistently pursued. “But it does mean that this program had an Achilles heel: large and persistent misallocation” (Levy 2018, p 281). Levy stresses that society needs to be convinced that a policy shift is indispensable to achieve prosperity, and thus a debate is needed as to whether current policies and institutions are conducive to the social ideals embedded in Mexico’s constitution, but “the debate is about the means, not the ends.” He stresses that in this difference, Mexico possesses a phenomenal source of strength. In contrast to some other countries, there

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is no question that in addition to providing security and defending property rights, a fundamental task of the Mexican state is to combat poverty, increase welfare, and pursue social justice—all individual rights won by the Mexican Revolution. There is no thought that in this very unequal country the government should sit idly by while the market does its job. The debate is not about whether workers should be protected from the loss of employment, whether everybody should have access to publicly funded health care, whether the tax system should be used to redistribute income, or whether the government should help the poor “… the debate is about how” (Levy 2018, p 282). The book argues that “current tax, social insurance and labor protection policies are flawed, that they are the main reason why growth is slow, and that a policy shift is necessary” (Reid 2018), but this shift needs to be accompanied by a narrative as to what is next in Mexico’s quest for prosperity and why. Beliefs about policies standing in the way of Mexico’s prosperity are either embedded in Mexico’s revered constitution or have been part and parcel of political discourse for many years. It is not likely that Mexicans will give up on these beliefs unless better ones are on offer. Levy notes that societies “have not only interests but also passions.” Therefore, to gather the political support necessary for a policy shift, it is indispensable to construct a new narrative: a vision and an explanation that “this shift will indeed result in the productive and inclusive society that Mexicans aspire to live in” (Levy 2018, p 283) (Photo 6.3). It is abundantly clear that Santiago Levy’s (2018) analysis of Mexican economic performance over 20 years is very comprehensive and thorough. Moreover, his study is set in the context of the 1917 constitution and the social and economic beliefs that emerged from the Mexican Revolution and its principles and goals, as well as those enshrined in the welfare-state ideology of Western nations. Step by step, the reader is led through the argument by tables and graphs on the relevant hard data. It is indeed a groundbreaking book. Levy was the outgoing policy chief at the Inter-American Development Bank, and he designated Mexico’s conditional cash-transfer scheme. The book should appeal to President López Obrador, a left-winger. Although the policy changes are daunting, the president has a strong mandate. However, he seems to be wedded simply to expanding noncontributory pensions and other benefits. It would be ironic and disappointing if he cannot accept the wide-ranging reforms that Levy argues so persuasively that now need to be introduced.

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Photo 6.3 Peasants carry loads of firewood for sale as charcoal. Mestizo citizens in background, Oaxaca state

References Agren D. Murder-rate survey leaving Mexico fuming. May 19, 2017. Guardian Weekly. Connelly P. Is urbanisation out of control? March 30, 2018. Guardian Weekly. Every day, we breathe death. November 8, 2019. Guardian Weekly. El Chapo’s daughter marries narco rival. February 4, 2020. Dominion Post, Wellington. Faceless nation: Torn apart in a civil war that no one will admit is happening. November 8, 2019. Guardian Weekly. Grillo I. The populist of the pueblos gets ready to shake up Mexico. July 9, 2018. Time. James PE. Latin America. New York: Odyssey Press; 1959. Levy S. Under-Rewarded Efforts: The Elusive Quest for Prosperity in Mexico. Washington: Inter-American Development Bank; 2018. Mexico’s answer to Donald Trump. Economist. 2018. Available at: https:// www.economist.com/leaders/2018/06/21/amlo-mexicos-answer-to-donaldtrump. Accessed August 27, 2020. Parfit M. Emerging Mexico. National Geographic. 1996;190:5–132.

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Phillips T, Agren D. Mexico votes for a turn to the left. July 6, 2018. Guardian Weekly. President to “eradicate” theft after pipeline blast. January 21, 2019. Dominion Post, Wellington. Reid M. A misshapen economy. July 21, 2018. Economist. Tropical messiah: How Andrés Manuel López Obrador will remake Mexico. Economist. 2018;431(9148):20–22.

PART III

Venezuela

CHAPTER 7

Economic Backwardness in the Venezuelan Andes

Introduction: The Dual Economy In Venezuela—“land of orchids and black gold”—nature is bountiful. Natural splendors abound in the dark selva, the empty llanos, and the towering Sierra, a splendor that exists in vast landscapes or in individual sights such as the araguaney (Handroanthus chrysanthus ), the national tree of Venezuela. When the araguaney is in full bloom, its shower of gold excites the admiration of the visitor, as do the breathtaking signs of modernity that have appeared in some Venezuelan townscapes. The soaring skyscrapers (Photo 7.1), gleaming Cadillacs, and multilane freeways of Caracas suggest that this city is the most “North American” metropolis in South America, and the opulent villas, country clubs, and gracious treelined avenidas of the rich residential quarters display a magnificence that is rarely equaled in the other major capital cities of Latin America or the Western world (see Fig. 7.1, Venezuela). Signs of modernity in Venezuela do in fact reflect an economic achievement that is in many respects impressive. Closer consideration, however, shows that although some structural changes have occurred, Venezuela still has a narrow and privileged base. Just as the araguaney blooms in all its glory in the wilderness, flourishing in a parched, impoverished soil, so the glittering cities rise on a basis of rural poverty, petroleum wealth, and cheap labor. And just as the national emblem is impressive and colorful, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Watters, Rural Latin America in Transition, Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65033-9_7

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Photo 7.1 The two Venezuela’s: Caracas with modern skyscrapers, and a crowded shanty town

so the status symbols of Caracas are also impressive or colorful, whether they are giant bureaucratic offices worthy of the heirs of Simón Bolivar or elaborate structures like the Hotel Humboldt, surely one of the most expensive white elephants of a hotel ever built.1 Caracas, however, does not consist merely of manifestations of opulence, by which Venezuelans proudly flaunt their modernity to the West, it also consists of huge horrifying barriadas that sprawl shapelessly over the hillsides. Here, in flimsy, squalid shacks, sometimes made of cardboard and lacking amenities of any kind, the urban poor live out their wretched existence. The real truth is that while Venezuela is often called the richest undeveloped country in the world, its underdevelopment is stark and there are gross disparities in wealth throughout the country. While it has some of the highest living costs in the world, it also has some of the lowest per capita incomes, such that obscene surplus and wealth sit beside socially fracturing rural–urban migration and per capita incomes that allow barely subsistence survival among both the rural and urban poor.

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Fig. 7.1 Map of Venezuela

These wide disparities in personal wealth or income are matched by marked regional disparities. Indeed, economic development in Venezuela has followed the classic pattern of a dual economy. Up to a point, we can explain the evolution of a dual economy by considering macroeconomic trends of capitalism working in a foreign-dominated, narrow export economy (Levin 1960).2 Since massive foreign capital was concentrated in the rich petroleum sector and vast sums of money in the form of profits and interest remitted annually out of the country,3 it is hardly surprising that little capital spilt over from the capitalist sector into the domestic sector, given the lack of linkage between the two. As such, the gap between them has steadily widened, for with unguided market forces determining the allocation of resources, cumulative movements in income inequalities occurred and became entrenched (Myrdal and Sitohang 1957).

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From 1920 to 1958, Venezuela was a wholly dependent export economy based almost exclusively on the exploitation of petroleum by foreign capital and enterprise. However, since 1958 new favorable economic trends that are more “inward-looking” have widened the domestic economy, and substantial sums of capital have been invested in such traditional enclaves as the Andes. These new, healthy economic policies were adopted after the serious deterioration in the terms of trade after 1957 and the flight of capital in 1959–1961. Stringent import controls and a remodeling of the structure of imports then redistributed resources so that the economy has continued to develop at a high rate, although total investment decreased by almost 30% in 1958–1961. Although petroleum provided dynamic growth in GDP, the separation of the foreign export sector (including its dependents, the “luxury importers”) from the domestic economy went hand in hand with low investment in agriculture and manufacturing. The economic crisis of 1958–1961 and the concomitant flight of capital proved to be a veritable boon, for the deterioration in terms of trade coupled with the programs of economic and social reform of Betancourt’s new Acción Democrática government led to a substantial diversification of the economy through import substitution and a curtailment of luxury expenditure. The economy turned from being “outward-looking” to “inward-looking.” Over 3600 new enterprises were set up between 1958 and 1963, and more than 760 existing industries expanded their productive capacity. Employment in manufacturing grew by over 20% in that period (Economic Commission for Latin America 1966). Although the domestic industrial and capitalistic farming sectors grew at an average annual rate of 5.7% in 1950–1958 and 6.4% in 1958–1964,4 there were few changes in the traditional agrarian sector. Much of the increase in output was achieved by an extension of the farming frontier onto new virgin land. Between the agricultural censuses of 1950 and 1961, the area of agricultural land increased by over 4 million hectares (growth of 18%), while the number of farm units increased by 36%. Half the massive growth in output was achieved by dairying and livestock, and most of the rest by sugar cane, cotton, tobacco, and sesame. It is significant that almost all these products came from the capitalistic farming sector and practically none from the traditional peasant sector (Charves 1963).5 Although public-sector consumption increased by over 65% between 1959 and 1964 and government expenditure was rechanneled both

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geographically and in the provision of much better educational and health services, there were few signs of a narrowing of the gap between the two sectors of the dual economy. Seen in the context of these economic trends, in the Venezuelan economy, the stagnation of the traditional peasant sector might perhaps be explained by the manner in which the advanced export sector developed up to 1958 and the dates of the new desirable trends. Following the thesis of Levin (1960), it could be argued that the dual economy in Venezuela has evolved on the basis of the international mobility of productive factors. The modern, highly productive petroleum industry has been built up since the 1920s by the mobility of foreign capital, enterprise, and expertise, with Venezuela supplying the resources and labor. Undoubtedly, this thesis is highly relevant to Venezuela in explaining the characteristics of the petroleum sector, as well as the lack of resources that have been available for investment in traditional peasant areas. However, it is only partially applicable, for like most macroeconomic theories, it fails to consider the characteristics of the peasant sector as a positive factor in explaining economic backwardness. Apart from noting the insufficiency of capital invested in the traditional sector, it fails to examine the fate of the capital that is invested in the form of supervised credit, technical assistance, institutional aid, and social overhead capital. Here, it is suggested that geographic fieldwork, based on representative local case studies and random-sample questionnaires, can shed light on the theory of the dual economy, which is of major importance in understanding the growth process in many developing countries. In describing economic backwardness in the Andes, I propose to consider how effective recent governments have been in their avowed policy to “sow the oil” by investing in Venezuelan agriculture and to recommend policies aimed at a solution.6 First, we consider major characteristics of Andean society and economy and then focus more sharply on the peasant problem by describing conditions in three areas of the Andes, each of which is representative of many other areas: Calderas-Altamira, the Upper Cojedes Basin, and La Quebrada. Each of these case studies shows the fallacy of applying widely held economic aphorisms to peasant economies. In each area, I discuss the impact in 1964 of official government policies aimed at ameliorating rural conditions. Consideration of the Maracaibo Lowlands and the community of La Estrellita then follows to show how local economic growth begins, thus providing guidelines for national policy (Fig. 7.2).

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Fig. 7.2 Venezuelan Andes: relief map

Andean Society and Economy The Andes or Sierra Nevada de Mérida extend for almost 500 km from the San Cristóbal depression near the Colombian border northeastward to the Upper Cojedes Basin, where it joins the lower coast range. Over a million serranos live in intermontane valleys of the Andes (see Fig. 7.3), and as elsewhere in Andean America, most of the population is concentrated in the intermediate tierra templada zone, where the important cities of San Cristóbal, Mérida, Valera, and Trujillo are located. At this altitude, the Spanish conquerors found that they could grow the crops and plants with which they were familiar in Spain. Moreover, by the nineteenth century, when coffee became the main export of the country, this climatic zone, home of traditional communities, was found to be ideal for this crop. From this conjunction of cropping with peasant society

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Fig. 7.3 Venezuelan Andes: settlement

grew the formation of pueblos, and a type of mestizo society characterized by cohesiveness and conservatism, and little direct contact between individuals and the outside world (Siso 1986; Wolf 1955) (Photo 7.2). The mestizo Andean society of today appears colorful and picturesque enough on the surface when seen against the vast backdrop of mountain peaks, golden maize fields, or lush mountain pastures. The neat, whitewashed houses and orange-tiled roofs and fertile cane lands of the valley bottoms or wooded coffee groves do indeed denote a measure of “prosperity,” a degree of productivity that is lacking in the Andes of Peru or Ecuador, but the reality of life in the Venezuelan Andes is harsh when stripped of its external attractiveness. In spite of recent progress in disease control, typhoid, dysentery, tuberculosis, goiter, and Chagas disease are still frequent killers, leprosy occurs in some communities, and cretinism is

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Photo 7.2 The rather bleak, cooler, and stormy region of the Andean Paramo

common. Fifty percent of the people live in small primitive huts (ranchos ). Education still lags behind the rest of the nation, with 27.2% of the population of the Andes being illiterate at the end of 1961 compared to 18% for Venezuela as a whole (Comisión Promotora del Desarrollo de los Andes 1965, p 412). Malnutrition is widespread, for a nutrition survey of 130 persons in the páramo just after harvest time showed that 94% of the sample received insufficient calories, with 18% ingesting less than 50% of the necessary requirement, while 20% did not receive sufficient total proteins and there were major deficiencies in the consumption of fats and vitamin A (Seelkopf 1962). With the birth rate in the Andes reaching 58 per 1000 in 1960 compared to 51 for the nation and death rates 12 per 1000 (8.7 for Venezuela), the rate of population growth was one of the highest in the world. Behind the neat, whitewashed walls, stark poverty is only too evident. Let us now consider the characteristics of Andean society and the economy that support this brutal social reality. Venezuelan society7 has been shaped by the classic institutions of Spanish colonialism and capital accumulation: the encomienda or forcedlabor system, and the haciendas . The penetration of capitalism has

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accentuated the dependent relationship of the peasant on the patrón and hardened class differences. Production for the market, the use of money, and trade and commerce indicate the market motivation of the peasantry, but the fluctuation of an uncertain market, the preindustrial milieu of the Andes, and many sociocultural, economic, and environmental restrictions limit their activities. While small communities display a homogeneity of shared values and a uniformity of archaic European culture patterns based on close kinship ties and an emphasis on family solidarity, Andean society as a whole appears to be more heterogeneous than homogeneous. Apart from marked social stratification, most “peasant” pueblos include people who are not peasants, but townspeople with urban aspirations and behavior patterns. Larger communities are really “town-peasant” communities,8 with the peasants forming only part of the community. Moreover, the term “peasant” as generally employed embraces a variety of types, including jornaleros (day laborers), apaceros (sharecroppers), peónes on haciendas, arrendatarios (renters), ocupantes (squatters), and numerous small-scale peasant proprietors. The implications of these differences between various types of “peasants” (campesinos ) could be significant in greatly affecting their economic behavior. The richer peasant who owns his own land, as in the Central Chama Valley, is more of an independent “yeoman” type, while the poorer campesino, who is frequently a tenant or sharecropper and often undertakes part-time wage labor, has some of the qualities of a “rural proletarian,” whose response to and needs in a development program of agrarian reform are likely to be quite different. Lastly, we might note that the ethos of Andean society as a whole, unlike that of many other peasant societies, has been perhaps less shaped by its great tradition of Hispanization and Roman Catholicism than by the exigencies of economic scarcity and the marginal position of Andean peasants in the market economy. Here, it will be argued that Andean peasants are involved in a “scarcity economy,” a fact that is of immense importance in explaining their values and worldview. For nearly the entire nineteenth century, the Andes enjoyed economic and political precedence as the producer of coffee. Population and immigration rates grew steadily, due to the expansion of this crop. From 1925 to 1926, there was a dramatic increase in oil exports and a decline in coffee. The Andes that I studied in 1963 was thus a region in decline. An examination of the Andean economy reveals its relatively archaic structure. While the rural population of Venezuela in 1936 formed 60.6%

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of the total, the figure for the Andes and the neighboring lowlands (here termed “zones of influence” [ZOIs]) was 78% (Comisión Promotora del Desarrollo de los Andes 1965, p 385). Over the period 1936–1961, the rate of change from rural to nonrural residence was 20.5% in the Andes and ZOIs compared to the much-greater rate of 38.1% for the country as a whole. Undoubtedly, if the more progressive ZOIs were excluded, the pace of change in the Andes itself would be much lower. Urbanization, which in Venezuela is an indication of the centralization and modernization of the economy, is proceeding more slowly in the Andes than in the rest of the nation, for over 63% of the increase in rural population between the censuses of 1950 and 1961 occurred in the Andes and ZOIs. Data on secondary industry indicate that most industrial units in the Andes are of small scale, with most factories employing between three and 15 persons and only a small number employing over 15. Many of the “factories” are indeed a domestic “preindustrial type.” Manufacturing in the Andes and ZOIs represents less than 3% of the national total in value of production. It is, however, with the underdeveloped character of agriculture that this chapter is especially concerned. Total output per hectare actually declined slightly from 1949–1950 to 1960–1961. Although national levels for many crops are low by world standards, most crop yields in the Andes are lower than in Venezuela as a whole. In terms of area planted, the main crops in the Andes and ZOIs are maize, coffee, plantains, bananas, sugar cane, beans, rice, and potatoes, yet of these only coffee harvests slightly exceed the national average (Ministerio de Agricultura y Cría 1963a), although climatic conditions in the Sierra are ideal for this crop. Maize production per hectare in Venezuela as a whole is substantially higher than in the Andes and the ZOIs. Yields of onions are five times higher in Venezuela than the ZOIs, while tomatoes are three times as high, and sugar cane twice as high. Moreover, the importance of the Andes is declining relative to the rest of the country for the production of various minor crops. Reasons for archaic agriculture and stagnating yields are not hard to discover. Most farmers are semisubsistence producers, consuming often 30% or more of their own production. The levels of technology are medieval, with mechanization being rare and confined largely to the lowlands at the foot of the Andes or around the main cities.9 In the tierra templada (temperate lands) and tierra fria (cold lands), campesinos work their tiny parcelas (small plots—“parcels” of land) with teams of oxen pulling the wooden “Egyptian” plow, which is unchanged since the

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Spanish introduced it in the sixteenth century.10 In 1961 in the three Andean states of Táchira, Mérida, and Trujillo, there were approximately twice the number of holdings using animal power (24,554) than the total number of ox teams (13,466), suggesting that many campesinos could not even afford to keep their own animals (Charves 1963).11 At lower elevations, the wooden plow and simple hoe give way to the equally simple machete, axe, hoe, digging stick, and firebrand, where conqueros (migrant subsistence farmers) practice longer-fallow systems of agriculture on the steep wooded slopes of the warm, humid foothills. Crop rotation is rare, with land in the higher elevations regularly lying fallow in a primitive three-field system (on terrenos buenos ), two-field system (on terrenos malos ), or cropped one year in four or five in the poor outfields (termed los colorados after a flowering shrub) (see Fig. 7.4). Little specialization of labor occurs. Capital investment in land is less than Bs1,000 per hectare, or less than Bs500 where unpaid reciprocal farm labor is regularly practiced. Labor costs represent more than 60% of total costs, with the cost of seed, animals, and depreciation of tools comprising most of the remainder (Charves 1963, p 28). With the exception of a small proportion of richer peasant properties in the central Chama valley, the rate of investment is too low to lead to economic development.

Fig. 7.4 Venezuelan Andes: cross-section from Lake Maracaibo to Barinitas, showing altitudinal zones and land use

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A major characteristic of Andean agriculture and a cause of its imprisoning traditionalism is the tiny, uneconomic size of holdings and the frequent fragmentation of parcelas, a consequence of population growth, inheritance, the low level of technology, and an intensive agriculture that stresses output per unit area rather than per unit of labor used.12 The population density of the Andes reached 33.4 people/km2 in 1961, the highest density in the nation apart from the central zone. When it is appreciated that over 62% of the farm units are under 10 hectares in area (and many under 5 hectares), the prevalence of minifundism becomes apparent. The 1950 figures show that 61% of the agricultural area was owned by small or large haciendas hemming in the small campesinos and preventing an expansion of their average area.13 While population growth led to an increase of 26.8% in the number of farm units in the 1950–1961 intercensal period, agricultural area increased by only 7.7% compared with the Venezuelan figures of 18.5 and 36.4%. In fact, in Trujillo state, the number of holdings increased by 7850 in this period, yet the agricultural area declined by 95,521 hectares, indicating the abandonment of land with mounting population pressure, overcropping, and serious erosion problems. Statistics, however, are somewhat inadequate to describe the quality of life and conditions of the peasant economy in the Andes today. To analyze the peasant problem in more depth, we now consider conditions in three representative areas on the lower slopes of the Andes. The implications of archaic technology, inadequate land tenure, low investment input, population growth, and exploitation by hacendados and moneylenders are clear enough. It is not surprising that the basic values and orientations of campesinos reflect these conditions of an “economy of scarcity,” expressing the hopelessness of their situation. As Foster has phrased it, the peasant views wealth as scarce and unexpendable—“A pie that is constant in size” (Foster 1965).

Calderas-Altamira: Failure of the Institutional Framework On the low rolling slopes of the Andes overlooking the gallery forests and llanos of Barinas, the Calderas-Altamira area is a classic, intermediate zone of shifting cultivation and in-migration. In this area, campesinos moved three or four times over 10–30 years, from the páramo or tierra fria to the lowlands. A sample of 40 informants14 showed that farm

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sizes varied from 1 hectare up to 100 hectares, with a median size of 6 hectares (average 14 hectares). Most campesinos were evasive or reticent about land tenure, for the great majority were squatters (ocupantes ) on municipio or national land and a quarter of the sample had spent less than eleven years in the area. Typical medianeros (medium-sized holdings) comprised about 4–6 hectares of poor, usually senile coffee—about the same area as San Martin—scrub serving as bush fallow, and 2 hectares in maize, yucca, and beans. People with good colluvial soils appeared to be better off, for they could plant sugar cane; however, half the local crop would be taken by a local patrón in return for crushing the cane in his small trapiche (a simple sugar-crushing process using revolving stones and cogs, often using oxand manpower) into blocks of brown, unrefined sugar (panela) that could be bartered for provisions at the local stores. Some overcropped land would revert to weedy pastures, enabling a few scrawny Criollo cattle to be grazed, and usually a few plantains, bananas, and other fruit trees were planted for household use. Apart from the small occasional sale of other products, coffee and maize were virtually the only commercial crops. At this ideal elevation of about 820 meters, coffee yields of about 385 kilograms per hectare were obtained compared to the national average of about 250 kilograms, but maize yields were very low (750 kilograms per hectare). Squalid, oneroomed peasant huts clustered in tiny hamlets near the larger properties on which the campesinos occasionally worked, cutting weeds or picking the coffee berries at a daily rate of Bs5 plus a meal. The completion of a road through the area in 1957 provided the region with a major opportunity to intensify commercial farming. A greater concentration of settlement appeared to have occurred along the road, and many rude peasant huts—earth-floored, walled with adobe or dried dung, and containing few furnishings besides a candlelit altar— dotted the roadside. While a slight stimulus to coffee growing may have occurred with completion of the road, no discernible signs of change could be detected. Little coffee replanting was being undertaken, although most groves were senile and declining in yield, and no nurseries of improved seedlings had been established. Although all informants regarded the road as a great boon to the area, it is significant that it was viewed as a social rather than an economic benefit, to be used, for example, to transport the sick to the doctor.

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There were reasonable prospects for development in the area. Soil samples analyzed from 30 fields showed that the levels of organic matter and nitrogen were high, although soil acidity and low phosphorus levels were to some extent limiting. In contrast to most other peasant areas, the size of peasant holdings was relatively large, insecurity of land tenure was not great, and the high coffee prices offered good prospects at that time. Moreover, the more modern state capital of Barinas lay only about 40 km away, and the regional agricultural extension station at Barinitas, 16 km away, was unusually efficient and active in promoting coffee replanting and the dissemination of more modern techniques and improved seeds. An extension agent was also based at Altamira, within the area.15 In spite of these advantages, coffee groves were never cleared more than once or twice annually, although increases in yield could be achieved easily and economically by more clearings. Labor was cheap and campesinos had much idle time. To the question “Do you want to plant more coffee?”, a large minority answered in the negative, although they possessed sufficient land, their own labor, and the means of raising capital. Very few of the majority who answered in the affirmative actually did plant more coffee. Answers usually displayed a disinclination to work harder, although the total labor input for 10 hectares of coffee required only 120 man-days annually, and initial clearing took between six and 20 man-days per hectare, depending on the size of second growth. Clearly, this disinclination cannot be attributed to a very low or zero value of marginal productivity of labor in this situation, for coffee prices were still good, and extra labor input, in the absence of other alternative uses, would have been economic. Moreover, many of the medianeros with 20 hectares of land were no more prosperous than campesinos with only 2–4 hectares, while the net profits of large properties were frequently as low as those of medianeros. One hypothesis to explain the stagnation of agriculture at AltamiraCalderas would stress the significance of low levels of education and literacy. Of 31 informants in the random sample, 25 had had no formal education at all, seven heads of households claimed they could read and write, and 24 could not, yet lack of education need not necessarily imply traditional attitudes or a reluctance to accept innovation,16 for motivation is based on the felt needs of a community and the goals that its members seek. In fact, almost all men were aware of the advantages of using artificial fertilizers. The community’s response to opportunities for technical change can best be illustrated by considering data on

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the use of credit. While most men wanted agricultural credit, only 12 of 40 had received credit at some time, while 18 had never received assistance. Only one man had used the loan to buy fertilizers, and four had bought improved coffee seedlings. The remainder either used the money for noneconomic purposes, thus subverting the purpose of the loan, or in most cases employed extra labor for such tasks as cutting weeds or second growth that were normally done by the campesino themselves. Therefore, the effect of credit was often to increase leisure with no gain in output occurring.17 Although per capita incomes were low at Bs1400, the mean income of 32 informants was relatively high for the Andes (the median, however, was much lower—Bs450). For those campesinos who had earlier come from the more densely populated and overcropped zone of NicataoBoconó in the Andes, the level of living that could be obtained by coffee growing and shifting cultivation—a “technology of expedience” in an area of relatively abundant land, no doubt—appeared to be satisfactory. As other case studies also show, the provision of capital to traditional campesinos without attempting to transform their institutional environment or capacity to utilize it effectively was bound to be futile, for in a highly schismatic, status-conscious class system campesinos who receive windfalls will generally merely ape the idle, unproductive activities of the patróns or hacendados higher up the status system.

Upper Cojedes Basin: Land-Tenure Anomalies and Agricultural Regression Over 160 km to the north, where the Andes drop down into the huge syncline of the Upper Cojedes Basin, the straggling chaparral vegetation west of Barquisimeto in the 1960s indicated the pronounced aridity of the area. Near Las Playitas, north of the rapidly industrializing city, peasant ocupantes used the firebrand machete, digging stick, or hoe to wring meager crops of maize and black beans from the scorched, reluctant earth. Maize was grown for a few years until dropping yields occurred, when sisal was planted. In some areas, as at La Cienda, it was too dry to plant maize, the great subsistence crop, except in unusually wet years, and sisal was dominant on calcareous soils or pineapple growing in acid conditions. A few sheep and goats were grazed illegally by some campesinos, and water had to be transported by mule back from wells further down the valley.

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On the steep hilly slopes that ring the Upper Cojedes Basin in Lara and Yaracuy states, the problems of land deterioration and desiccation of the environment were clearly evident. In wetter valleys, as at La Pancheria, campesinos eagerly felled the deciduous forest to plant the maize–bean complex until the young coffee seedlings bore fruit beneath the poor shade cover. On colluvial soils, one peasant had been planting annual crops for 20 years without fallowing, although yields had fallen steadily from 30 sacks to only six. The construction of a new feeder road into hilly, empty land (tierra baldia) had a magnetic effect on the nearby population, leading to a chaotic rush of occupants to settle the new land and utilize it in a typically destructive and extensive form of shifting cultivation, but on most slopes the protective forest had long since vanished and sparse weedy pastures covered the land where crops were formerly grown. The campesinos burnt the pastures annually for fresh green shoots for their stock, leading to further desiccation, and the reddish latosolic soils near Nirgua had become so compacted in its upper horizons that sheet erosion and gullying had greatly accelerated. Slopes of even 80% were occasionally planted with maize, with rows running straight up and down the slope. Techniques here expressed land shortage and overriding concern for the current crop, rather than any long-term interest in conserving the land. Clearly, such land should not have been under any crops at all, while on lesser slopes it would have been preferable for extension officers to have encouraged pastoral farming or strip-cropping. In some areas of the basin, campesinos worked out fallow systems that were appropriate for local ecological processes, but often land deterioration followed the occupation of a new area by campesinos unfamiliar with the local environment. Generally, fallowing was adopted because falling harvests indicated that the land was “tired,” but occasional rationality or understanding largely disappeared as peasants habitually repeated a practice that was part of their rural culture patterns: “We fallow the land because it is customary here.” At Botalon, crop: fallow time ratios of two to three crops to five periods of fallow were practiced, and maize harvests of only about 440 kilograms per hectare (half the level at Calderas-Altamira) were reported. If land was cropped for a third year on these steep slopes, as one informant declared, “the land would be washed away.” Maize borer and ants were very serious problems, and these factors, coupled with population growth, land shortage, and mounting erosion, led to a high rate of out-migration

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to Barquisimeto, Acarigua, and the asentamientos, or planned settlements established under the agrarian reform. Although dimly aware of their predicament, practically none of the campesinos expressed any plans for the future. Heirs and bearers of a preindustrial culture that had no remedy for a novel situation in which population and land resources were out of balance, their only hope of saving their land was acceptance of drastic innovations from outside. But since this was not available, campesinos clung to their tiny precipitous minifundios , mechanically perpetuating the practices that could only terminate in the final ruin of the land, virtually their only resource. In the absence of state action, it was indeed ironic that this process of destruction had to run its course as a necessary prelude to the rehabilitation of the area, for only with depopulation and land abandonment will this watershed area again become clothed with protective forests. Thus, from a long-term view, large-scale out-migration is a very favorable trend. In the region as a whole, the campesino had another major obstacle to contend with. Haciendas were more numerous and larger in size than in the Calderas-Altamira region. Although in some parts, as at La Soledad, the social system of the hacienda persisted in all its old strength, with peónes accepting their traditional dependence on their patróns, the operation of the Agrarian Reform Law in Lara state seemed to stimulate social mobility in many parts, encouraging peónes to dream of an escape from the closed social and economic system that had bound them to the big landowners. Thus, at La Pastora, one disgruntled campesino asserted that “rich people own everything here.” Looking to the agrarian reform for his salvation, he believed that his only chance of escaping from his life of unrelieved penury lay in his application to the peasant’s syndicate to secure his acceptance as a colono on a new asentamiento near the city of Acarigua. The cruel oppression and gross inefficiency of the hacienda system are too well known18 to require elaboration here. Although the system was much more widespread and dominant on the llanos than in the Andes, its effects were far from unimportant in the Sierra. Here we will merely outline the land-use characteristics of a typical cattle hacienda near Las Playitas to illustrate its archaic and exploitive character and the obstacle it provided to agricultural modernization. The finca of 820 hectares was devoted to raising dairy cattle yet had no sown pastures and the stock subsisted on thorny chaparral vegetation. Some years ago, coffee was grown successfully, and sizeable maize harvests reaped. In

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those days, it seemed to one peón, “there had been more rain,” for a much denser semideciduous forest cover had been maintained, providing better browsing for the cattle and conserving runoff. In the early 1960s, however, the process of desiccation was only too evident: the vegetation cover was much sparser, accelerated sheet erosion was well advanced and one large well had dried up. Coffee could no longer be grown, and maize was now a very marginal crop. The grazing capacity of the finca had declined sharply and supported an average of only about 35 head of cattle (varying from eighteen in the dry season up to a hundred in the wet season) or one beast to about 24 hectares. Questioning revealed a complete lack of more modern scientific practices in techniques employed or management policy. The owner who lived in Barquisimeto rarely visited his property, being mainly concerned with other business interests. Investment in the finca was practically nil. In short, the hacienda, the biggest property in the area, was not only steadily deteriorating, but was also creating conservation problems and flash flood hazards for campesinos farming lower down the valley. Its current management represented a barrier to further progress, and also endangered other farmland in the area—the land of campesinos who were powerless to protect their own holdings. Elsewhere, the reverse may have operated: for example, hacendados complained that the invasions of ocupantes into forested land at the head of streams could seriously diminish the volume of water available for irrigating sugar cane on large properties lower down if forest clearance proceeded unchecked. Thus, the major problem of the Upper Cojedes hill lands was land tenure. Tenure insecurity led to destructive exploitation and a robber economy where the campesino lacked a long-term interest in his land and intended to move on later like a typical conuquero or migrant subsistence farmer. Lack of land over widespread areas led to a proliferation of tiny minifundios, while elsewhere, where land was abundant, land-use planning was not carried out to prevent the chaotic settlement and destructive land use of ocupantes along the new roads. Elsewhere, archaic and unproductive haciendas locked up large areas of land that should have been opened, under supervision, to land-hungry colonists. While the application of the Agrarian Reform Law led to the expropriation of some large haciendas in Lara state (by June 1964, 36 asentamientos had been established for about 3000 families on 40,239 hectares of national land and expropriated hacienda land, i.e., 3% of the

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state population or 0.2% of the area), invariably only the most potentially productive land on the lowlands was expropriated. Expropriation of haciendas on poor hilly land, such as the one described, was also needed under articles 122 and 123 of the Agrarian Reform Law19 as a first step toward the implementation of conservation measures and improved land use as projected by regional planners. In this period, the Upper Cojedes Basin was being studied by an international team of specialists with whom I worked, investigating the natural and human resources of the region and planning its integral development in the future. While many difficult problems existed locally, it was the opinion of many members of the team that the technical and research problems involved in the region’s development were relatively easy to solve, and that productivity could be vastly increased by the application of techniques that were already known, but implementation of these solutions was certain to be frustrated by the existing archaic land-tenure pattern. For example, aerial topdressing and over sowing in many hilly pastoral areas could have been economic and effective in vastly improving pasture quality, yet the apathy of hacendados prevented such innovations. Equally, the tiny area and fragmentation of minifundios prevented mechanization, and the provision of tractors and deep plows by the state would not be practicable without land consolidation. As such, poverty and inefficiency are part of a vicious circle of economic backwardness, and amelioration of conditions cannot begin until the institutional framework is radically reformed. Although the need to change people’s minds was also important here, as at Altamira-Calderas, it was not the matter of greatest priority. Political action to refashion the institutional pattern is thus indispensable as the first step in rural modernization.

La Quebrada: “Minifundio Mentality” and Rural Stagnation The area of La Quebrada on the lower western flank of the Andes serves as an eloquently dispiriting case study of the rural depression that characterizes most parts of the Andes to varying degrees. The state of Trujillo in which it lies is particularly unsuited to annual cropping, for only 21% of the area of the Motatán Basin (115,375 hectares) is judged suitable for cropping, while 76% (419,126 hectares) is classed as suitable for pasture and forest, and 3% (19,937 hectares) for wildlife and recreation (Food and Agriculture Organization 1964).20

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In spite of the predominance of hilly terrain, Trujillo is densely populated and has long had the greatest density of rural population in Venezuela (in 1950, its rural population density was 27.1 people/km2 ). However, population pressure in the form of short-fallow systems of cultivation led to falling harvests in the three main staple crops of shifting cultivation: maize, yucca, and black beans. In spite of a larger area cropped for maize in the 1961 agricultural census compared to that of 1950, the total harvest fell, with per hectare production declining from 803 kilograms per hectare to only 640. The drop-in yucca production was of the order of 60% (Ministerio de Fomento 1961). Beans fell by 100% between 1958 and 1962 (Ministerio de Agricultura y Cría 1963b). Moreover, the main cash crop, coffee, also suffered a decline in total production, despite a slight increase in the area harvested. Decline in crop production and population increase have clearly meant deteriorating soil fertility to the point of near-exhaustion and massive soil erosion. Field surveys supported this conclusion: the starkly denuded slopes and bleak weed-infested land were eloquent witness to the exploitable character of land-use systems characterized by shortening fallows and the untold damage that they wreak. Associated with this, a robber economy and grinding poverty were the usual antiquated institutional features of Andean society, including latifundism and minifundism. Apart only from the rapidly desiccating state of Lara (Upper Cojedes Basin), no other state suffered such a decline in crop production. In view of this despoliation of its land base and its close proximity to the Maracaibo oilfields, Trujillo state has experienced the greatest rate of large-scale out-migration in the nation. The hapless peasant, unwitting instigator and victim of the vicious circle that was gradually pulling him down, was only dimly aware of its broad trends and its painful results: “The time is changed — too much rain, too much drought, too many floods.” The characteristics of these archaic agrarian systems that push people out to the lowlands can be seen at La Quebrada. At an elevation of about 1005 meters, this area, like the more fertile Calderas zone on the eastern side of the Andes, represents an intermediate zone affected in a similar way by the process of step-migration from the páramo. Most campesinos had lived there at least five years, and many had been born there. The size of holdings showed a typical range from 0.5 or 1.5 hectares up to 6 hectares, with occasional medianeros or small haciendas of 150 hectares, interspersed among the many more numerous minifundistas. Most of the

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latter were merely sharecroppers who were provided with seed and the use of the land from the owner, who received half the crop in return. Cropping centered on the near-universal Andean dichotomy of maize and black beans, with the former being entirely consumed by the peasant family and sale of the latter providing usually a small cash income. Many campesinos working land for several years without rest reported harvests only half the size of earlier levels. Sowing:harvest ratios of maize varied from 1:40 to 1:20 and less on poor, worked-out land and maize yields per hectare varied from about 900 kilograms on the most productive soils to 300 kilograms on impoverished land. With beans, a sowing of one pallito of seed (9 kilograms) usually produced only ten to 15 pallitos at harvest time. The lowest planting:harvest ratio reported on low-lying land (1:7) sank to a pitiful 0.25:7 on higher, steep land. The immediate causes for such abysmally low harvests were clearly soil pauperization, gully and sheet erosion, and chronic pest problems, and underlying causes inadequate institutional and economic conditions. Further evidence of declining soil fertility appeared in the fact that many peasants had not grown chickpeas, formerly an important crop, for ten years, as the land was “too tired.” Slopes that were being cut up by incipient gullies were rested for only two years before recropping, and land shortage often forced cropping of land until it was completely ruined. Erosion was indeed stated to be a reason for fallowing, and gullying was often caused by a degeneration of soil structure and depletion of organic matter, especially on steeper land. However, the greatest problem besetting campesinos was plague infestations: in no other area of the Venezuelan Andes did I see such great ravages wrought by maize borer, ants, and other common pests. In this cooler zone, rapid regeneration of vegetation did not occur and clearing of fallow land merely meant hand-cutting of weeds and hoeing with the primitive escadillo (or use of the iron-tipped digging stick—the baraton) or plowing with the “Egyptian” plow. For all agricultural operations in the year, labor input totaled 20–32 man-days per hectare or up to 40 if transport from distant parcelas to the roadside were included (most men were too poor to own a donkey or mule). A typical 3-hectare minifundio required only 100–120 man-days’ work per year, and apart from about Bs200–300 earned from the sale of beans, and perhaps Bs125 from the sale of a cow or a little cheese, no other income was produced on the holding. The extent of disguised unemployment is apparent from these facts, and although for two-thirds of the year

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a man was idle and could take up alternative employment, few opportunities for wage labor existed in the area. Most men obtained only a few days’ work each month on the larger coffee fincas at Bs3–8 a day (plus food) or occasional employment on road maintenance. The 12–15 coffee fincas in the area employed a total of about 150 men for four months a year at an average daily wage of Bs5 and food. This gave an income of only about Bs400 to supplement the pitiful figure of about Bs450 earned on the minifundio, giving a total of about Bs850. Although about a hundred men in the area commuted daily to Valera (about 30 km distant), the expansion of job opportunities in that city for unskilled labor was nowhere near to meeting the demand (500 men were on the waiting list for employment with the Ministry of Works), and urbanization had led to a gradual withering up of nonagricultural employment in La Quebrada and other rural areas. In view of these facts and the desperate plight of peasant agriculture, a high rate of out-migration was predictable. Although both this and the gradual destruction of the soil base indicate a rural society no longer in harmony with its environment, cultural integration was still sufficiently great for tension and dissatisfaction to be suppressed or latent, rather than existing at the articulate level of “felt needs.” When asked what their problems were, the campesinos invariably replied that there were none. When questioned further, they could nominate only the pest problem, which was in fact so serious that it decimated or often nearly destroyed their entire crop. Indeed, these campesinos were born into a “culture of poverty”21 and so habituated to this state, as well as to ill health22 and malnutrition,23 that they only dimly perceived their predicament and recognized as problems only new trends of recent development (the pest problem seemed to have become much more serious of recent years). Perhaps the greatest danger to Venezuela was that the campesino, heir and bearer of this variety of the culture of poverty, would in turn pass on this culture to his children and his children’s children, perpetuating a culture rooted in archaic technology, illiteracy, dependence on “folk methods” rather than on modern science, and in attitudes of hopelessness, helplessness, and resignation that are so inimical to the spirit of enterprise and innovation that is desperately needed if traditional agriculture is to be transformed and the modern world ushered in. The degree to which this form of the culture of poverty, or alternatively what can be termed here a “minifundio mentality,” existed and was shared by some of the larger landholders can be illustrated by outlining the characteristics of a small hacienda of nearly 150 hectares. The owner

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was as poor as nearby minifundistas that possessed only 3 or 4 hectares, for he grazed on his land only one cow, one goat, and a few fowls. Although his land was poor and generally steep, its grassy pastures could have supported about 50 head of cattle, and only 4 or 5 hectares were cropped with maize and black beans to provide subsistence and meager cash. When asked why he did not seek advice from the agricultural extension agents or apply to the state bank for credit to enable him to run more cattle on his empty pastures, he replied that he “wanted counsel first.” This man, by no means a simpleton, was in fact living like a typical minifundista, unaware that his land provided good security for a loan, and that even under traditional techniques, it could produce an income far in excess of what he was receiving. This example, typical of many traditional areas in Latin America, shows that the view, widely held among economists, that in traditional agriculture the peasant is efficient in his allocation of resources is at most true of only some cultural areas.24 The pitifully low yields reflected traditional techniques unrelieved by more modern innovations. Almost all heads of households were illiterate, all maize was of criollo varieties, and no man in the sample had ever used artificial fertilizers or insecticides, although they knew of their existence. When agricultural credit was mentioned to them, some campesinos regarded it in the same way as store credit, declaring that “it would be shameful to request it.” Other men said they would use credit (which none had ever received) to extend the area of cultivation. None conceived that an intensification or improvement of techniques would be the most useful way to use credit. When I visited campesinos whose crops had been nearly destroyed by insect pests and asked them why they did not go to Valera to ask the Ministry of Agriculture to show them how to use insecticides, the answer was characteristic of the state of society: “People here have never thought of going.” Until a society becomes aware of its problems and realizes that some cannot be solved by traditional solutions but require outside help, it cannot commence the process of modernization.25 It is, however, fortunate that the means of escape from this situation— the “La Quebrada situation”—lay readily at hand. When a harvest failed (usually the immediate cause of migration), some men sought work in Valera, but most headed for El Tigre and neighboring lowland areas close to Lake Maracaibo. Indeed, so many men from this Andean zone moved to El Tigre that it appeared to take on the character of a daughter colony, and the relationship between the two appeared to be even closer than that between Nicatao/Calderas-Altamira and their daughter settlements

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fringing the llanos of Barinas. Although a means of escape was provided by the urbanization and industrialization of the larger cities, the attraction of the oilfields and the virgin lands of the tierra caliente, they did nothing to ameliorate minifundism. The “feedback” influences of the burgeoning, modernizing cities seemed to have little positive effect outside the capitalistic farming sector, which in this state was confined largely to sugar growing in the valleys and the larger pastoral or rice farms of the lowlands. The trends under way served to sharpen the differences between the two sectors of the dual economy, and without massive institutional change and integral regional development planning, the traditional sector, including areas like La Quebrada, seemed destined to remain a stagnating archaic enclave in the modernizing economy.

Notes 1. This superhotel was built high above the city on mist-enshrouded heights and could be reached only by cable car. Consequently, it was nearly always empty. The chain of superhotels built by the dictator Pérez Jiménez is now operated by the state at a large loss. 2. In “The development of underdevelopment” (Monthly Review. 1966;18[4]:17–31), Andre Gunder Frank argued that dual economies do not exist, because the structure and development of the capitalist system have led to a “development of underdevelopment,” with backward regions becoming satellites of their regional and national metropolis, and ultimately of the world metropolis. There is some truth in this argument, which is not inconsistent with Levin’s thesis, discussed below. However, anthropological studies suggest that this view that “capitalism has effectively and entirely penetrated all the most isolated regions” is highly questionable, and Frank does not adequately consider the nature of social systems in backward areas that vitally affect economic behavior, nor—apart from the supply of labor—can the Andes really be considered a satellite of Caracas or Maracaibo. 3. Transfers abroad reached US$718 million in 1957 (a year before Pérez Jiménez was overthrown) against an average of US$389 million in 1950– 1954. By 1963, they had fallen by nearly 60% from the 1957 level. 4. If the average production for 1952–1953/1956–1957 is used as a base of 100, the 1964–1965 (preliminary) figure was as high as 172, with per capita agricultural production up by 22%. This was high for Latin America. 5. Luis Fernando Charves’s Geografia Agraria de Venezuela (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela; 1963: pp 105–120) divided

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10. 11.

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Venezuelan agrarian systems into “advanced” and “underdeveloped” according to investment, proportion of money in total investment, mechanization, capital accumulation, use of fertilizers and irrigation, and other criteria. He also maps areas of capitalist agriculture. This chapter is based on five months’ fieldwork in the Venezuelan Andes in 1963 and 1964. I gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, the Venezuelan government, the Wenner Gren Foundation, and the Instituto Forestal Latino Americano de Investigación y Capacitación. Sociological work on Andean society is lacking, so our characterization must necessarily be generalized and tentative. Some data are contained in the Consejo de Bienestar Rural. Some of the characteristics of Venezuelan society described by George W Hill and Ruth Oliver de Hill in La Vida Rural en Venezuela (Caracas: Tipografía Vargas; 1960) are relevant to the Andes, although their work was based on representative municipios in five regions of Venezuela. In general, Andean society conforms to the peasant subculture according to the typology of C Wagley and M Harris in “A Typology of Latin American Subcultures” (American Anthropologist. 1955;57[3]:428–451). It lies between the classification by Wolf of peasant types into relatively closed “corporate communities” and “open communities,” although in the higher regions of the Andes characteristics of the former type appear to be dominant. The three Andean states have 44% of the mules in the nation, according to the Instituto Agrario Nacional’s Memoria y Cuenta (Caracas: Instituto Agrario Nacional; 1963). This simple wooden plow merely scratches the soil, for it lacks a moldboard or coulter. The plough lasts only about two years before the iron tip has to be replaced. A yunta (team of two oxen) costs Bs800–1000 in this zone. Charves has estimated a normal life for the parts of an Andean “Egyptian” plow to be four months to two years, which represents a heavy annual depreciation rate of Bs35–45, and thus a yunta and plough represent a most expensive piece of capital equipment, and their high depreciation rate and high replacement cost a great burden to poor campesinos. The cost of maintaining a team of two oxen might reaches Bs40 annually or nearly 10% of the total capital invested in the holding. For a detailed study of a sample area, see F Martínez’s Estudio Integral de la Cuenca del Chama; Sector Lagunillas de Urao (Bogotá: University of Los Andes, 1963). In 1961, 65% of the farm units and 75% of the agricultural area in the Andes were the property of the producer (41 and 84% for Venezuela, 27% and 78% in ZOIs), with 6% of farms and 6% of the area rented (10 and

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2% for Venezuela and 15 and 3% for ZOIs), 17% of farms and 5% of the area under sharecropping (Venezuela and 1%, ZOIs 6 and 3%), and 11% of farms and 12% of the area occupied by squatters (Venezuela 41 and 13%, ZOIs 51 and 18%). Each of the case studies that follows is based on about two to three weeks’ fieldwork in each area. A questionnaire was submitted to a random sample in each zone. Additional data were obtained from several informants representing different classes. Although the time available did not enable a sufficiently large sample in each area to be interviewed, the high consistency among the answers and the fact that they accorded with the expectations of local experts give confidence in the results. The generally poor impact of agricultural extension in various parts of Venezuela has been shown by various unpublished evaluations of asentamientos of the agrarian reform. See also Ramón Lepage Barreto’s Evaluación de Impacto de Extensión Agricola en Tres Comunidades de Venezuela (Caracas: Ministerio de Agricultura y Cria; 1963). In the La Perla area of the Papaloapan Basin, Mexico, I found many illiterate Mazateco Indians using artificial fertilizers and other modern techniques. See Watters’s Shifting Cultivation in Latin America. This conclusion was confirmed by the majority of informants who had received credit at Rio Jiménez, in the area near Boconó, and other areas. Among recent general studies are Frank Tannenbaum’s Ten Keys to Latin America (New York: Knopf; 1965: pp 77–94), Oracy Nogueira’s Plantation Systems of the New World (New York: Columbia University; 1959), and Benjamin Higgins, José Medina Echavarría, and Egbert de Vries’s Social Aspects of Economic Development in Latin America (Paris: UNESCO; 1963). Studies referring to the hacienda system or land tenure in Venezuela are Charves’s Geografia Agraria de Venezuela (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela; 1963: pp 91–92, 122–124), Corporación Venezolana de Guayana’s Reconocimiento Agropecuario y Forestal del Oriente del Guayana Venezolana (Caracas: Consejo de Bienestar Rural; 1961), René Dumont’s Terres Vivantes (Paris: Plon; 1961), Ramón Fernández y Fernández’s Reforma Agraria en Venezuela (Caracas: Tipografía Vargas; 1948), George W Hill’s “El campesino Venezolano: Algunos consideraciones sociológicas para una verdadera reforma agraria” (Economoía y Ciencias Sociales 1958;1[1]:5–11), Thomas F Carroll’s “Land reform issue in Latin America” (in AO Hirschman’s Latin American Issues: Essays and Comments [New York: Twentieth Century Fund; 1961], pp 161–204), Levi Marrero’s Venezuela y Sus Recursos; Una Geografía Visualizada: Física, Humana, Económica, Regional (Caracas: Cultural Venezolana; 1964), La Colonización Agraria en Venezuela 1836–1957: Dirección de Planificación Agropecuaria (Caracas: Ministerio de Agricultura y Cria; 1957), Anuario Estadística Agropecuario

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(Caracas: Ministerio de Agricultura y Cria; 1963), Anexo 1: Hidrologia e Hidráulica, Anexo 11: Estructura Agrícola, and Anexo III: Estructura Socio-Económico (Caracas: Ministerio de Agricultura y Cria; 1962), Raymond Penn and Jorge Schuster’s “La reforma agraria en Venezuela” (in Reformas Agrarias en América Latina. Caracas: Fondo de Cultura Económica; 1965), Pablo Vila’s Geografía de Venezuela: El Territorio Nacional y Su Ambiente Físico (Caracas: Fondo de Cultura Económica; 1960), and A Curtis Wilgus’s The Caribbean: Venezuelan Development —A Case History (Gainesville: University of Florida Press; 1963). 19. It is, however, clear that these articles and others provide loopholes to hacendados who wish to challenge the Agrarian Reform Law. 20. However, this classification possibly needs some modification, as it is based on the use-capability classes of the US Conservation Service. A major need in planning tropical land use is to modify this temperate land–classification system, giving more weight to correlating slope with the degree of permeability of major tropical soils, such as humic latosols and red-yellow podzols. 21. I use the term slightly differently from Oscar Lewis in his classic studies on Mexico and more recently on Puerto Rico (The culture of poverty. Society. 1998;35[2]:7–9 and La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty [New York: Random House; 1966]). Lewis’s concept, which is based on some 70 characteristic traits, sees the culture of poverty as “a type of life,” a subculture of Western capitalistic society that is both an “adaptation and a reaction of the poor to their marginal position in a classstratified, highly individuated, capitalistic society.” The culture of poverty emerges in a cash economy where persistently high rates of unemployment or underemployment, low wages, and unskilled labor occur. The poor in this setting do not share the values of the dominant class, who “prize thrift, the accumulation of wealth and property, stress the possibility of upward mobility, and explain low economic status as the result of individual personal inadequacy and inferiority.” Such a culture is a response to the failure of society to provide adequate social, political, and economic organization for the low-income population. In consequence, the individual who grows up in this culture “has a strong feeling of fatalism, helplessness, dependence, and inferiority.” Lewis suggests that the “culture of poverty transcends national boundaries and regional and rural–urban differences within nations.” While the culture of the poorest peasants of the Venezuelan Andes exhibits almost all these features, it may be doubted whether the hacendados are quite as achievement-motivated as Lewis’s model suggests. Moreover, in the communities of the high Andes more akin to Wolf’s “corporate community” “peasant type, peasant

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culture, unlike the “culture of poverty,” appears to be reasonably well integrated, satisfying, and self-sufficient. Even the author’s superficial enquiries revealed a high incidence of parasites, dysentery, and goiter. This appeared to be poor, even by Andean standards. In most peasant families, meat was eaten only once a week, after attending Mass at La Quebrada. For example, see Theodore William Schultz’s Transforming Traditional Agriculture (New Haven: Yale University Press; 1964). Schultz cites in support of this view the detailed study by Sol Tax among highland Guatemalan Indians at Panajachel (Penny Capitalism). I visited Panajachel, and in comparing this agricultural system with that of many other traditional societies in highland tropical America, I would regard it as the exception, rather than the rule. Allocative efficiency varies immensely with different cultures. Many economists explain peasants’ reluctance to adopt innovations as being due to their unwillingness to risk family security (which is usually ensured by traditional techniques) by undertaking new, untried methods. See, for example, George L Beckford’s “Agricultural development in ‘traditional’ and ‘peasant’ economies: a review article” (Social and Economic Studies. 1966;15[2]:156). However, our Andean data do not suggest that the peasant consciously rejected new methods by such a process of risk calculation. It is possible that Wolf’s concept of “defensive ignorance” or rejection may have a slight application or may have applied to “corporate peasant communities” a generation or so ago, in so far as such communities similar to those of the Peruvian and Ecuadorian Sierra or the Chiapas Highlands of Mexico existed in Venezuela. This concept, however, implies an “active denial of outside alternatives [that] if accepted, might threaten the corporate structure,” whereas Andean campesinos today appear to be either eager for or more often apathetic about government-extension assistance. Rarely are they hostile to such aid, as the concept of defensive ignorance requires, nor do innovations threaten the traditional structure. See Eric R Wolf’s “Types of Latin American peasantry: A preliminary discussion” (American Anthropologist 1955;57[3]:452–471).

References Charves LF. Geografia Agraria de Venezuela. Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela; 1963. Comisión Promotora del Desarrollo de los Andes. Diagnóstico Económico de la Región de Los Andes y Sus Zonas de Influencia. Caracas: Ramón López; 1965. Data from Ministerio de Fomento: III Censo Agropecuario. 1961.

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Economic Commission for Latin America. Economic Survey of Latin America 1964. New York: United Nations; 1966. Food and Agriculture Organization. Estudio de Precolonización en el Departamento de Puno, Peru. Rome: FAO; 1964. Foster GM. Peasant society and the image of limited good. American Anthropologist. 1965;67(2):293–315. Levin JV. The Export Economies: Their Pattern of Development in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; 1960. Ministerio de Agricultura y Cría. Anuario Estadística Agropecuario. Caracas: División de Estadística; 1963a. Ministerio de Agricultura y Cría. Programa de Extensión de El Vigía. Caracas: Ministerio de Agricultura y Cría; 1963b. Myrdal G, Sitohang P. Economic Theory and Under-developed Regions. London: Duckworth: 1957. Seelkopf, C. Ensayo Sobre Alimentación de Campesinos en Páramos y llanos de Venezuela. Mérida: Universidad de los Andes; 1962. Siso C. La Formación del Pueblo Venezolano: Estudios Sociológicos. Vol 1. Madrid: Ediciones de la Presidencia de la República; 1986. Wolf ER. Types of Latin American peasantry: a preliminary discussion. American Anthropologist. 1955;57(3):452–471.

CHAPTER 8

The Situation in the Llanos

The Maracaibo Lowlands: Migration as a Solution Until 1950, the dark, silent forests of the Lake Maracaibo lowlands and the wooded margins of the vast llanos of Barinas and Apure repelled successive generations of colonos, for tropical diseases, including malaria and yellow fever, decimated the populations of early settlements. Political disorder and revolutions also added to the insecurity of lowland life. Barinas state (formerly the state of Zamora) actually declined in population from 62,000 in 1891 to 55,000 in 1920 (Crist 1955, p 5). El Vigia in the Maracaibo lowlands, a thriving market town of 8000 people in 1963, was not founded until 1911, when a French company began to build a railway line through the western lowlands. Malaria epidemics, however, took a heavy toll, especially during 1914–1922, and the growth of the town was slow until the 1950s (Ministerio de Agricultura y Cría 1963a). In contrast to the clear mountain air and neat, ordered fields of the Andes, the hot, fetid forest lands and miasmic solitude of the selva must have held many terrors for colonists. Until the liana-tangled forest giants fell before the first axes, the montaña seemed to be locked in mystery, serving as a habitation only for the fiercest of animals and unearthly apparitions, but once cleared, the colono knew that this tierra baldia could produce good crops, for the warm, humid earth was relatively © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Watters, Rural Latin America in Transition, Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65033-9_8

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productive, at least as long as the inherent fertility of the forest humus remained. Although large areas of lowlands consisted of strongly leached, reddish latosols or oxisols derived from older parent materials (Westin 1962; Hardy 1959), they had good physical properties that permitted the cultivation of bananas, citrus, and other fruit. Where there was a strong dry season, pastures could be established. The younger piedmonts and calcareous alluviums weathered into variable soils that were badly drained and rather low in organic matter, but they had quite high exchange capacities that permitted cultivation of a wide range of crops (Westin 1962, pp 32–35), provided soil compaction could be avoided and a reasonable level of nitrogen maintained. Once the medical revolution had rid the lowlands of its greatest hazards, in-migration rapidly increased. Population figures and study of aerial photographs show that forest clearance and settlement proceeded apace from 1950. While the rate of population growth in the 56,000 km2 of the four lowland states averaged 2.32% per year between 1941 and 1950 compared to 1.29% in the Andes and 3.03% in Venezuela as a whole, from 1950 to 1961 the Zones of Influences (ZOIs) increased at a rate of 5.13% compared to 3.99% for Venezuela and only 2.29% in the Andes. Veillon and Lombardi have shown that 13% of the state of Apure, 18% of Barinas, 21% of Zulia, and 30% of Portuguesa was deforested by 1963 (Veillon 1963; Petriceks 1959). The highest intensity of forest clearance usually occurred in states that had either a high density of rural population or a rapid rate of in-migration. The construction of major roads (and especially of the Panamericano Highway along the western flank of the Andes in the early 1950s) acted as a magnet, and feeder roads also led to a sharp increase in population and deforestation. Apart from Portuguesa and some areas in Barinas and Zulia, where mechanized, capitalist farming was responsible for forest clearance, most deforestation was due to shifting cultivation and the clearances of pioneer ocupantes. By 1961, nearly 27% of the total occupied area in the state of Zulia was held by ocupantes. In the district of Zerpa of Mérida state, which stretches down to a portion of the Panamericano, in-migration of the most spectacular kind occurred, its population growing from 6457 in 1950 to 18,829 in 1961. Along the road itself, the population doubled every few years. The thriving market town of El Vigia, the main center of the area, reached a population of 8000 in 1963 as ribbon development rapidly occurred. The roadside exhibited all the usual features of a motorized, urban-influenced landscape and explosive population growth:

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Photo 8.1 At the base of the Andes the rainforest has been cleared to build a new settlement (Mosquito Canyon)

petrol stations, restaurants, and other services for the passing motorist, with incipient shantytowns springing up on road junctions, makeshift shops, garish roadside stalls, and new feeder side roads that were mere connections of mud holes. Truckers played the prime role in the commercialization of the area, for on this superhighway they could transport a load of bananas or plantains to Maracaibo in 10 hours or to Caracas in 14 (Photo 8.1).

Agriculture in the Lowlands It is hardly surprising that the landscape when I was there had the raw, semi-developed appearance of a “pioneer fringe” area, with clumps of trees and stretches of forest interspersed with rough pasture, groves of plantains, and the mixed crops of campesinos. The random sample of 69 campesinos in the Caño Zancudo, Caño Rico, and Caño de Mujeres areas showed that the length of occupancy varied from one month up to 20 years, with the latter claiming to be the first local resident. The median

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was five years. The great majority admitted to being ocupantes on empty government land, and holdings varied in size from 0.5 to 40 hectares (median 5.5 hectares). However, these smallholdings were often scattered among cattle-grazing medianeros or haciendas of 100–200 hectares or more. Campesinos were still often in the trial-and-error phase of land occupation, and instability of land use was often indicated by vague or variable ideas on fallowing, reflecting the inexperience of new settlers, as well as local variations in soil fertility. Land-use systems in the Maracaibo lowlands varied only slightly. Apart from the larger pastoral farms, there was a range of crop combinations, including bananas, coffee, yucca, cacao, maize, and oranges, along with some pig-raising. Estimates of land-clearing costs varied from 20 to 31 man-days per hectare at Bs26 per 8-hour day (Bs200 being common). Agriculture in the Maracaibo lowlands was thus still at a most rudimentary stage, and as speculation was rife, there was a rapid turnover of properties and the occupation sites of squatters. Animals were rarely vaccinated against disease, parasite control was poor, and mortality rates high. Pigs were allowed to scavenge for much of their food, and thus fetched the lowest prices. It has been estimated that at least 45% more campesino households could have run poultry. More serious was the great underutilization of pastures for cattle grazing, for farmers often lacked working capital and had to sell their cattle for ready cash. In 1963, Ministry of Agriculture agents estimated that the artificial pastures of the area supported about 0.66 cattle per hectare per year (when cut, 3.2 beasts per hectare), while natural grasses supported only 0.1 cattle per hectare (Ministerio de Agricultura y Cría 1963b). Meat production was extremely low: 15,000 hectares produced about 1,812,000 kilograms of meat, or only 120 kilograms per hectare. The total of 70,000 head of cattle in the area could immediately have been raised to 90,000 without any changes needed, apart from the better use of existing resources. On the small 2- to 3-hectare holdings, the settlers usually worked several days a week at laboring to eke out their small earnings, and farming became merely a part-time occupation. Plans for the future were vague, but significantly rather more coherent than in the Andes: some wanted to recreate the cropping system of the Andes by planting coffee. Although this lower zone was too hot to be ideal for this crop, the perpetuation of former practice showed in the failure of some colonists to adapt to the different conditions. Others wanted to plant rice on irrigable flats or declared that they would “put all their strength” into pastureland. Apart

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from pasture and bananas, the crop with the greatest potential on good soils was cacao, although in 1963 plants were mostly only one or two years old and not yet bearing. In the meantime, yucca and maize provided subsistence.

The Advantages of Living in the Tierra Caliente Although several men expressed a desire to sell if they could obtain a good price and move elsewhere in the lowlands (especially, if possible, to an asentamiento agrarian reform land), they all declared that they were happier than in the Andes. This high mobility may represent a perpetuation of the conuquero’s outlook, with its instability of settlement. Indeed, the estimated median per capita income of campesinos at Cano Rico (over Bs420) was about double the estimate for El Cinera San Eusebio in the Andes. Data from a large number of campesinos in the lowlands on both flanks of the Andes suggested that the migrants were rather better off than in the Andes: the estimated net income of a typical Andean farm of 3 hectares gave a net profit of only Bs40, or Bs200 if labor were calculated at only Bs7 a day. On the other hand, in the tierra caliente, with more land under bananas or plantains and larger maize harvests (often two crops a year), gross incomes were considerably higher than in the Andes, and if only unpaid family or reciprocal labor was used, the campesino was indeed better off than in the Andes.1 However, if little land was under semipermanent crops and much more devoted to maize, requiring high annual clearing costs, the higher per hectare clearing costs and wages for daily laboring that were often required reduced net profit to the point where it was barely economic. Often it was as low as only Bs400.2 Apart from some anemia, parasite infestation, and malnutrition, human health conditions in the tierra caliente appeared to be little worse than in the Andes. Although no improved methods were used in the area, 90% of informants were illiterate and agricultural extension had made only the slightest of impact, the potential for development was clearly there. The Instituto Agrario Nacional was beginning a cacao-planting program to be financed by credit, and the excellent transport facilities provided unrivaled opportunities for a continuation of the current expansion of truck-farming. In short, if the migrant’s dream of finding a new way of life in the lowlands and achieving higher social and economic status was hardly achieved and he succeeded only in exchanging one kind of poverty for

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another,3 he was on the whole better off in his new environment. My data suggested at points that he was leaving behind in the Andes some of the old imprisoning traditionalism. A local dignitary in the Andes noted that migration involved something of a psychological change, as well as a change of residence: “When they go down, they are full of hope for a good crop and so use insecticide. But they don’t use it up here — they never expect to get a good crop here.” In the challenging new environment vastly different from the Andes, traditional economic behavior could not be validated by reference to immemorial prescriptive norms. The migrants were initially amenable to new techniques, and in the situation of “open” opportunities in the lowlands, campesinos could possibly change from the quasicorporate peasant type typical of the high Andean slopes, to the “open” type of Wolf’s typology. It would have been useful if government agencies had capitalized on this tendency in technical assistance programs in the first months of settlement before the migrants lapsed back into traditionalism and recreated many of the conditions from which they had escaped. The prime need was governmental provision of infrastructure and the coordination of development tasks so that soil and land-capability surveys could be undertaken, cadastral surveys carried out, feeder roads constructed, and agricultural credit and extension advice provided to speed and rationalize economic development. Above all, colonos needed title to the land they occupied and government assistance in superior methods of land clearance to enable 20hectare properties to be cleared and maintained in permanent production, for without technological change, the campesino in the hot wet tropics with a machete, axe, and digging stick could clear and maintain in production at best only 5–6 hectares of land. A new minifundism was thus frequently created, which provided a similar obstacle to modernization that the old minifundism of the Andes had already kept tenaciously in place. In Venezuela I noted on my last visit that migration had occurred at a steady rate, with people moving from the Andes to occupy empty land on both sides of the Andes on the new Pan American highways, planting their crops and grazing a few livestock. The government had appointed some new field staff to guide and assist the new settlers. However, many of the field staff were widely treated with derision, calling them peritos (puppy dogs).

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In addition, many peasants moved to the large cities, including Caracas, where they erected their simple shacks on any “empty” land. President Chávez insisted that at least one golf club in Caracas be taken over by the government to provide land for the homeless settlers. The large extended family in most cases had by now contracted or split up to small households of parents and children, living usually in one small house or shack. La Estrellita: The “Takeoff” into Economic Growth The case studies considered so far have served both to illustrate the nature of peasant problems in the Andes and to outline in part some of the policies required for their solution. The last case study reveals how the dynamic forces of change in one typical community4 have considerable relevance to the problem of the Andes as a whole. At the relatively high altitude of 2133 meters, La Estrellita lacks the long growing season of communities lower down, but has the advantage, not present in the tierra caliente, of a stable climate–soil ecosystem that is suited to the production of annual ground crops. Although only 5% of the community’s 4760 hectares are flat, much of the 29% of the area in undulating slopes can be utilized. It is, however, on the colluvial soils of the narrow valley bottoms that most production is concentrated. Here, the 88% of the community who were farmers grew potatoes, carrots, beetroot, cabbage, garlic, turnip, lettuce, and cauliflower on about 250 hectares. Most of this land was intensively cropped and irrigated; on poorer land, fallow agriculture and grazing were practiced. Minifundism was again dominant, for 72% of the farmers had under 5 hectares each, 6.2% had medianeros of 20–100 hectares, and 4.8% were relatively large landowners, holding 100–500 hectares or more. Proprietors owned most of the land (59%), with tenants using 37% and ocupantes 3%. La Estrellita was richer than most communities, with the wide range in income reflecting marked social disparities. The privileged classes, comprising 10.5% of the population, had incomes of Bs10,000–28,600. An intermediate group (14% of the population) earned Bs2000–5000 per family, while 61% can only be described as very poor, as they earned less than Bs2000 per capita. Over half of these lived in a state of desperate poverty, with a maximum income of under Bs1000 per family. Their income was in fact negative if the costs of production are calculated. Over three-quarters of houses had earth floors, and about half consisted of only two or one rooms, 61% of the population was illiterate, and only 41%

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of children of school age attended school. Malnutrition was widespread, with very low consumption of meat or eggs and a great reliance on grains. Infant mortality was high. In short, La Estrellita up to 1962 was typical of most Andean communities: its chronic penury and rural backwardness were not relieved by any sign of progress, but in that year two men, for reasons that they could not adequately express, decided to try artificial fertilizers. Fortunately, success was immediate and clearly apparent in the larger potato harvests, and a few other campesinos began to use a little fertilizer. At this stage, when the interest of the community in one practical innovation appeared to have been aroused but the innovation had not been widely adopted, the local agricultural extension agents decided to work in the locality. Their advice received a ready response, for the new agricultural theories were already being vindicated by local practice. In a short space of time, most men began to use artificial fertilizer for their cash crops. By 1963, all growers in the sample used it for potato growing and 73% for vegetables. Encouraged by this success, other desirable innovations were readily adopted: 78% and 80% of the sample planted improved seed for vegetables and potatoes instead of using the traditional criollo seed. Fungicide was next adopted, and then improvements made to the system of irrigation. Other innovations, such as the use of herbicides, had not been adopted by any farmers, but appeared to have a good chance of acceptance, provided their value could be shown in practical demonstration. On the other hand, progress was still confined to potato and vegetable growing, and ignorance of more modern methods was generally evident in answers to questions about methods of increasing cattle production: only 46% gave good answers on this question, suggesting pasture improvement or vaccination. Ignorance and the prevalence of traditional attitudes were also displayed in answers to questions on the use of agricultural credit and other agricultural improvements. In spite of the rapid progress made in two years, the potential for further development was very great. Agronomists estimated conservatively that carrot and beetroot harvests could be increased sevenfold and cabbage harvests by four and a half. With one notable exception (garlic), the most common crops grown had the best prices, so the campesinos were reasonably cash-conscious. The main defects in agricultural practice were bad timing and poor application of irrigation, inappropriate planting seasons for some crops, the use of poor crop varieties for local ecological conditions, the low percentage of campesinos using organic fertilizers,

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and deficient control of weeds, insects, and pests. Aspects of local agriculture that were least developed and the ones that were likely to be the last to be modernized were significantly concerned with the time-hallowed staple—maize. Poverty, however, stems not only from archaic or inefficient local techniques but also from poor involvement of the region in the wider life of the nation. In terms of market conditions, this is shown by the very low prices received by local growers, reflecting the poor communications of the area, the lack of organization of a vegetable market and sound calculation of market prices, and above all the excessive profits made by middlemen. In 1963, when studied by the extension agents, significant new attitudes to agriculture were revealed by answers to specific questions. When each campesino was asked what he would do to increase his harvest next year, 71% gave rational answers, indicating their commitment to sound more modern methods, 50% said they would apply fertilizers, 21% said they would combat plant diseases and pests, and only 2% said they would increase the area planted. When campesinos were asked why they did not use artificial fertilizers before 1962 or 1963, the answer was almost always “I was not accustomed to using fertilizers.” This answer, which I received from scores of campesinos throughout the Andes, reflects adherence to an age-old, habitual husbandry in which more modern scientific techniques were entirely lacking. Such an attitude does not reflect any hostility to new techniques. It never occurred to the campesino to use them, as they were not “customary” or normative. In discussing the rural culture of the Estrellita area, a technician declared, “The conformity of these people is very great,” implying that tradition minimized innovation. But once the external innovation was widely adopted, it became internalized or a regular, functional part of the agricultural system of La Estrellita. In this way, conformity can be a real advantage, speeding modernization, for not only does the innovation itself become customary or normative, but (when followed by other innovations) the acceptance of innovation may even become normative, with one change leading to another in a snowballing process, as we have seen in potato and vegetable growing. As Apter has described it, this form of social change involves the “traditionalizing of innovation,” and in the Venezuelan Andes (in contrast to some traditional societies) such innovation does not threaten basic social institutions or cherished values (Apter 1965). Genuine social change that leads to substantial economic development requires more, however, than a mere willingness to adopt permanently

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new means of achieving existing goals or the formulation of new goals. It also requires sufficient capital to pay the cost of the innovations. Here, the role of the government extension service was important, for due to its influence, as many as 18% of the local farmers had received credit in one form or another. More, however, had received loans from local “businessmen” than from the state bank, indicating the importance of local capital. However, far more than 18% of campesinos had adopted the new innovations, indicating that the cost of them could usually be met from current savings, meager though these savings often were. Two other elements in the process of social change at La Estrellita are significant. First, there seemed to be a rather higher correlation between literates and educated people adopting the innovations compared with illiterates.5 Secondly, the role of two respected leaders in the community seems to have been significant. The fact that these leaders were among the first to support the use of fertilizers no doubt led to their earlier, widespread acceptance. Questions put to a sample of campesinos suggested an important link between leadership and innovation. In answer to the question, “Who are the two persons most respected in the community?”, the two leaders each received 17 votes. Significantly, the same two men also received the most votes (23 and 25) in answer to the question, “Who are the three persons most interested in solving the problems of this place?” The two leaders were not rich, with farms of only 8 and 28 hectares. They could best be classed as medianeros with some entrepreneurial qualities. Both could read and write, but only one of the two had lived for many years in the area. Although a detailed study of leadership is needed, the data suggest that a trend was well under way from the traditional pattern of ascribed leadership with authority based on inherited social status and maintenance of a rigid social organization to achievement leadership interested in innovation and problem-solving. Such a modernistic leadership pattern may reflect a rural culture in the course of transition, suggesting that the community was ready for economic development even before the extension agents arrived.

The Way Forward In presenting the problem of the Andes, I have described its macroeconomic features and then analyzed conditions in three broadly typical areas. Calderas-Altamira, the Upper Cojedes hill lands, and La Quebrada

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are each different miniatures within a larger landscape. Each of these miniatures contains much of the misery and much of the agony of life in the Andes, where people remain impotent or at best frustrated in the face of vast impersonal forces that they can barely comprehend. These forces—the inherited dead weight of tradition, the obsolescent workings of an archaic land-tenure system and the inadequate institutional framework, the aborting of social change, economic enterprise, and upward mobility by a rigid, exclusive social structure—constitute the very core of the Andean problem. At the same time, each miniature illustrates the failure of current orthodox development policies and the fallacy of some widely held and firmly rooted concepts about peasant economic behavior. Some signs of hope, some favorable trends, can however be discerned, and in the discussion of the Maracaibo lowlands and La Estrellita, the chief emphasis shifts from diagnosing the problem to outlining its cure. Here, the implications of the case studies will be drawn together, and specific policies suggested (Photo 8.2).

Photo 8.2 Plantains grow next to a new house of a migrant family, Zulia State

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Theoretical Implications The implications of the data, as far as the theory of economic dualism is concerned, suggest that much more weight should be assigned to sociological and cultural factors than is usually recognized. When viewed in the context of the national economic trends described, the stagnation of the Andes can be partly interpreted as due to the separateness of the foreigndominated petroleum sector, the movement of vast sums of capital in the form of profits and interest out of the country, and the fact that little capital spilt over from the “outward-oriented” export sector into the traditional domestic sector. While this argument is sound as far as it goes, it fails to consider the characteristics of the traditional sector and the relative lack of success (although not total failure) of various development schemes and forms of investment undertaken in the Andes. By examining the response of certain Andean communities—the human resource involved in economic development—this chapter has given a sociological explanation of economic dualism, while admitting the partial truth of the Levin thesis. Although similar to Boeke’s sociological interpretation of economic dualism, this analysis differs in certain respects.6 A major conclusion indicated by the data at many points is that social aspects of economic development are of considerable importance. The failure of the road to stimulate economic development at AltamiraCalderas, despite close proximity to a good extension station, the overriding concern for the current crop in the Upper Cojedes region, which meant the destruction of the soil base, or the attitudes of hopelessness and resignation expressed in the minifundio mentality of La Quebrada, all indicate the poor quality of the human resources. Within the limits imposed by a generally niggardly environment, two main explanations are suggested for the economic shortcomings of Andean society. The first constitutes the strength of the dominant class and the forces of reaction noted, as manifested by the inefficient cattle haciendas of Las Playitas. Even within the narrow confines imposed on peasant society by such barriers to economic development, the response of campesinos to economic opportunities was sluggish and disinterested. Such a conclusion is suggested by the current satisfaction at CalderasAltamira, with a poor–moderate level of peasant livelihood. In spite of the existence of relatively abundant land, cheap labor and (in some cases) capital, and the opportunity to plant more coffee when improved seedlings were available and prices good, most farmers preferred to do nothing. The use of credit for noneconomic purposes, or merely to increase leisure, not output, and the cropping of only 1 or 2 hectares by

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many campesinos, when labor-input data and the absence of alternative employment showed they could easily crop (under current technology) another 1–2 hectares, further illustrates this point. Similar fieldwork data were found in many other parts of the Andes. Two points of major importance emerge from this analysis. First, under common conditions of peasant agriculture in the Venezuelan Andes, the assertion that the peasant is efficient in his allocation of resources is often untrue, or true only of some peasants in some situations. Secondly, and related to this point, the marginal productivity of labor does not always fall to zero given typical labor inputs on peasant holdings. Greater returns could often be gained by squeezing more out of the scarce factor—land— by using family labor more fully. However, the number of weedings was sometimes virtually institutionalized at only two or three a year, although three or four would obviously have been beneficial. Policy Implications The policy implications of these findings are clear. Obviously, a removal of barriers to economic development will greatly ameliorate the situation, but they will not in themselves be sufficient. The carrying through of genuine agrarian reform is absolutely necessary as a first step,7 for only by refashioning land tenure so as to eliminate both minifundism and latifundism can the basic institutional conditions be created that will enable regional economic planning to be effective. Similarly, the undercutting of exorbitant middlemen by establishing government marketing agencies is also needed. However, the aforementioned forces of reaction are not to be conceived of as mere “barriers” that can be swept away by legislation or even in the short term by integral land reform, for these forces have permeated and affected almost every aspect of the peasant’s life and shaped his rural culture. To eliminate them, one would virtually have to tear him from his milieu. Even if this whole milieu were altered, at least a generation would pass before the peasant would alter his basic cognitive premises, and even within the narrow confines and constrictions imposed upon him by the hacienda system and an invidious social structure, the campesino is by no means free. As the product of this social system, he cannot cast it off, and social change following land consolidation and tenure reorganization could only be gradual. For this reason, solutions that advocate a mere removal of barriers that are “external” (as it were) to society are simplistic and not likely to achieve much success. In the same way, orthodox “supervised” credit programs and price-support

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policies will have only slight success, due to the poor commercialization of the peasants, the strength of noneconomic life goals that compete with economic goals,8 and especially the limited needs of peasant society. Indeed, the full tragedy of the Andean situation lies in the fact that the campesino has been born into a world of poverty, lives his life out in conditions of poverty, and will hand on to his children the traditions of poverty. For the new fieldworker in the Andes, nothing is more discouraging or exasperating than the manifestations of the “La Quebrada situation,” or this variety of the culture of poverty. Although his crop may be nearly destroyed by insect pests, as at La Quebrada, or threatened by massive erosion, as in the Upper Cojedes hill country, the campesino still asserts, “There are no problems.” While some tension and dissatisfaction do exist latently and may even become overt when a harvest fails, or a campesino, driven to desperation, actually decides to migrate, failure to recognize their condition or to perceive their problems is perhaps the greatest barrier to economic development in the Andes. Oscar Lewis has suggested that the culture of poverty is much more difficult to eliminate than poverty per se, and the Andean data would tend to confirm this view. Conceiving the culture of poverty as a perpetuation of certain patterns of life over generations to form a kind of prison, Lewis suggests that it is a prison whose door stands slightly open (as, for example, in the situation at Altamira-Calderas, where more modern institutional conditions were available), but it is nonetheless a prison from which few inmates readily escape (Apter 1965). It is also a not-uncommon characteristic of poor peasants, who nevertheless are still survivors.

The Minifundio Mentality: A Form of the Culture of Poverty Our data are too inadequate on various aspects to attempt a formulation of a full-scale model of the minifundio mentality. We can merely sketch an outline based on the fieldwork findings in the hope that further fieldwork will refine the model and define its characteristics more precisely. The extent to which it is seen to be merely another version of Lewis’s more systematic formulation of the culture of poverty will then become clear, although there appear to be a few significant differences. What we term the minifundio mentality is widespread in areas of minifundism (although not confined merely to minifundistas) in highland Latin America, being found in areas of mestizo and Indian populations.

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The ideology of the ignorant, the illiterate, and the very poor, the minifundio mentality is a set of value orientations and basic premises that are characterized by attitudes of helplessness, resignation, fatalism, and dependence. People with a minifundio mentality expect nothing from life and their felt needs are very few. Their perception of their problems is very poor, and they only become dimly aware of their predicament when their situation drastically deteriorates. Their ability to plan for the future is very slight, and short-term orientations and gratification of immediate needs are characteristic. Most of these traits are identical to those formulated by Lewis in his model, but there are some significant differences. Their slight perception of felt needs, or awareness of problems, expresses a higher degree of cultural integration or social organization and a more integrated, satisfying, and self-sufficient culture than is to be found amongst the people of the culture of poverty, nor does there appear to be an awareness of middle-class values, as Lewis postulates (Lewis 1998, p 23). The minifundio mentality, like the culture of poverty, is a product of Western capitalism and colonialism, and seems to evolve in a restrictive, highly stratified society where the strength of the dominant class and the limited economic opportunities prevent upward mobility. Above all, it is characteristic of a society that is marginal to the main centers of economic growth in the nation, a society that is restrictive because it is based on an “economy of scarcity,” a situation that Foster has described as like “a limited pie that is unexpandable.” When a society has lived for centuries in conditions of economic scarcity, it is only natural that it has such an ethos as the one I have described. Such an ethos strongly influences market motivation, for the peasant who has a minifundio mentality sees only a tenuous connection between work input and production achieved, between techniques employed and the acquisition of wealth. As Foster (1965) said of the peasant, “One works to eat, but not to create wealth. Wealth, like land is something inherent in nature.”9 What are the implications of this concept for economic development planning in the Andes? It may well take a generation or so of more modern education and a complete transformation of the milieu to replace the basic value premises of the minifundio mentality with attitudes conducive to modernization. On the other hand, our evidence becomes rather equivocal on this point if (against the evidence) it is assumed that the minifundio mentality was equally as strong as elsewhere at La Estrellita before development began. If this were so, it certainly provided no

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serious obstacle preventing economic takeoff. However, it would seem that only when the minifundio mentality is replaced by a modernistic ethos would McClelland’s achievement motivation become strong. The migration process from the restrictive environment of the Andes to the “open-resource” situation of the lowlands provides an existing mechanism for effecting this basic and vitally needed form of social change. Clearly, policies must be formulated that attack the minifundio mentality as well as poverty itself. Obviously, education can play a major role in enabling campesinos to utilize their environment much more effectively. After the accession of the Acción Democrática government in 1958, a good start was made on the education front,10 including a greater emphasis on technical education, rather than a merely verbalistic or literary education. Orthodox policies, too, can be much more effective if real teeth are put into them. Supervised credit must really be supervised, and La Estrellita shows the success of closely linking technical advice and demonstration to the provision of agricultural credit. In the same way, agrarian reform must be integral and integrated to be effective. Here, the real failure in general is due to the alienation of the elite, represented by the extension agents, from the campesino masses they are meant to serve. The end result of this failure of the elite to communicate was expressed by one chagrined campesino: “Here, extension is only for the rich.” Capitalism: A Partially Effective Solution How effective, it may be asked, is the capitalist laissez-faire solution? Unhappily, the Andes as a whole seems to be increasingly affected by backwash (Instituto Agrario Nacional 1963), and the trend toward widening regional disparities within Venezuela seems likely to draw off the forces of enterprise (Griffin 1966) to the rapidly industrializing cities to the north and around the Basin of Valencia. In this situation, the Andes are increasingly being recognized as the traditional enclave in a growing economy, as the unproductive region least deserving of investment capital. In the richest country in Latin America, when efforts should be made to distribute wealth more widely and improve the productive capacity of backward areas, it appears that wealth is flowing away from the areas that need it most. The Andean states of Mérida, Táchira, and Trujillo received only 10% of credit loaned in 1960–1962, although they contained 13% of the national population. On the other hand, the states of Guárico, Aragua, and Zulia in the capitalist sector received over half of

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all loans for only 20% of the population (Anuario Estadístic Agropecuario 1962). Within the Andean region, of course, relatively productive valleys or cities (such as San Cristóbal or Valera, which are, significantly, on the margins of the Andes) do attract enterprise, but there is little genuine regional planning or “feedback” from the capitalistic sector to the traditional sector. The sharpening of differences between the two sectors of the dual economy (exemplified by Valera and nearby La Quebrada) shows that unbridled capitalism provides no adequate solution, for as long as modern economic influences fail to penetrate the traditional sector, so the minifundio mentality will continue to flourish. The influences of capitalism do provide part of the solution, however, for the current industrial revolution is not wholly confined to the factory areas and their market regions. Industrialization does indeed involve the building of a social and cultural pattern where capital, technology, science, and highly skilled agents of production may be not only utilized but actually produced by the ordinary dynamics of the system (Nash 1964). It may also involve “social mobilization,” which Karl Deutsch has defined as “the process in which major clusters of old social, economic and psychological commitments are eroded and broken and people become available for new patterns of socialization and behavior.”11 Moreover, the steady and substantial migration of people to regions of greater comparative advantage (Caracas, Maracaibo, and the lowlands flanking the Andes) prevents a worsening of the problem in many areas. If migration was much greater in volume, it might provide a solution like that recommended by Lutz for southern Italy (Lutz 1962). Ideally, the Andes might best serve the national interest as a great forest reserve, serving as a catchment area and tourist playground, but such a solution is obviously ludicrously unrealistic at the present time. Social Change and Economic Development Migration to the lowlands does however serve another purpose. Provided that present trends of rapid industrialization continue, the physical mobility of the Andean population will undoubtedly train society in social mobility and gradually create institutions appropriate to the process. If such a social mobility, fostered by physical mobility, agrarian reform, and rapid urbanization, does not gradually erode the foundations of the old order in the Andes, it will at least show it to be increasingly anachronistic. Although our data have presented the Andean campesino as not

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greatly empathetic (lacking in the quality of seeing himself in another man’s situation or comprehending strange situations or vicarious experiences; Lerner 1958, pp 47–52), some communities, such as La Estrellita, do suggest that the gropings of Andean society toward modernity are not always inarticulate. Only by reinterpreting his environment and his role in it and recognizing his ability to shape it can the peasant equip himself with an ideology conducive to modernization. Although fieldwork data are somewhat inadequate on this point, it is suggested that Andean peasantry is mainly a “nonparticipant” society, to use Lerner’s term, for it participates only partially in transpersonal and modernistic ideologies that affect Venezuela as a whole.12 However, the growth of migration to the lowlands produces many campesinos who have had some experience of urban living and who generally appear to be more empathetic. Certainly, the challenge of the tierra caliente sharpens their perceptions, widens their horizons, and as our data have suggested, inculcates a new “system of needs” that requires a higher standard of living than that gained in the Andes. While to be mobile is still not the accepted model of behavior for Andean society, it is not considered deviant behavior. The migrant conuquero is not a new phenomenon. In short, migration is indicative of a great process of social change, and many features (such as its “step” pattern) suggest it is a classical migration movement similar to those of widely different societies experiencing often an industrial revolution. In the course of 25–40 years, by means of three or four short-distance movements, campesinos are moving from the cold páramo to the hot, wet tropics. Many of them in this time are also moving from a life of isolated medievalism to participation in modern urban industrialism. If our hypothesis is correct, that the new colono arriving in the lowlands is more empathetic and less tradition-bound than the Andean campesino, a more rapid rate of economic development can be expected, provided other new obstacles do not exist. The prime reason for rapid development, however, is the fact that virgin lands are being brought into cultivation for the first time. Between the agricultural censuses of 1950 and 1961, agricultural land in Venezuela increased by over 4 million hectares. It has been reported that up to 3 million hectares of agricultural land (or 50% of existing area in crops and improved pastures) could be developed in the Maracaibo Basin and Barinas-Portuguesa (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development 1961).

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Economic Planning It is vital to plan the development of the lowland ZOIs in association with the more backward Andes. Economic plans that consider the Sierra in isolation from such areas and the burgeoning industrial north will become increasingly unrealistic. It is now clear that effective planning for such backward regions involves bringing the region into the orbit of a rapidly expanding “growth pole” or industrial complex and planning the region’s development in conjunction with this pole, which often provides many of the resources for investment in the region. Although nearby Barinas in the ZOIs is growing rapidly, the most dynamic centers affecting the Andes appear to be Barquisimeto, Valencia and Maracay. Within the context of macroregional planning, some trends within the Andes, as illustrated by La Estrellita, could be capitalized on to stimulate development. In stressing the importance of conformity in Andean behavior patterns at La Estrellita, I have noted that conformity to modernization can supersede conformity to tradition. Wise development projects should seek out communities where “achievement leaders” and rural entrepreneurs play a significant role in guiding local action, for here there is a real chance that innovations can be adopted. Once a reasonable number of people abandon traditional techniques for modern, demonstrably more productive ones, a snowballing process of change might ensue, for our data suggest that modernization is an integrated process with change occurring in a broadly consistent, rather than haphazard or piecemeal, fashion. Astute extension agents could act as catalysts in such situations, and the demonstration effect of many more “La Estrellitas” might ultimately bestir the Andean campesino from his torpor. No one simple solution can be recommended, for policies must be formulated pragmatically and flexibly to suit each situation. It is clear, however, that a mixed economy provides the best overall model for Venezuelan development. A vigorous, expanding capitalism will continue to provide the motor for economic growth, while state planning and government agencies must ensure that the fruits of capitalism are much more widely spread and new sources of growth created. The growing consolidation of democratic government in Venezuela since 1958, aided by booming economic conditions and the waning of Castroite terrorism, has provided favorable conditions for development tasks. A useful start in regional economic planning for the Andes has begun with the foundation of the Comisión Promotora del Desarrollo de los Andes, although it still

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lacks capital and above all executive power to implement integral development plans. Institutional development is essential to facilitate economic development and devise institutional structures capable not only of stimulating change but also of accommodating society to absorb changes with relatively few breakdowns (Eisenstadt 1966). It is vital that development agencies be staffed by an elite that is not only technically competent but also wholly dedicated to the task of modernization. Given the current status and value systems of Venezuela, this is probably asking for too much. Moreover, governments must realize that it is too easy to “solve” a problem by setting up an institution. As the history of Brazil’s northeast shows, such institutions often prove to be little more than “empty boxes” unless created to execute a clearly envisaged policy. Indeed, the history of regional development in Latin America shows that “the organ does not necessarily create the function” (Hirschman 1973). Venezuela is fortunate in having the capital resources to attempt the modernization of the Andes. If the statements of politicians are not mere demagogic mouthing, it may also have the will to do the task. What Venezuela still lacks is a policy suited to the complexity and magnitude of the problem in all its dimensions.

Notes 1. Income figures are given in my Shifting Cultivation in Latin America (Rome: FAO; 1971), and Economic Diagnosis of the Andes and Its Areas of Influence (Mérida; 1965:337) which gives higher per capita income figures for the ZOIs than the Andes. 2. Petricek’s estimates are closely similar to those in Janis Petriceks’s Shifting Cultivation in Venezuela (New York: University of New York; 1969). Between 1958 and 1961, an average 3-hectare farm gave a gross annual income of Bs2,560, and with labor input calculated at Bs10 a day, total costs come to Bs1,720, leaving net revenue of Bs840, i.e., Bs140 or US$31 per capita (if labor were calculated at Bs8 a day, net profit would be Bs1,150 or Bs192 [US$43] per capita). As such, these typical holdings of partial shifting cultivators are barely economic, and while different levels of poverty exist, all represent desperately low living standards. Charves and Narvaez have calculated costs per hectare for a variety of crops on Andean holdings. 3. Many colonos do not escape the power of the patróns when they leave the Andes. Large landowners often permit colonos to settle on their land

8

4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

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for a few years rent-free. Shifting cultivation by colonos leads to an invasion of natural grasses, and the hacendado’s pastures are thus extended. Landowners also often pay a small sum for each hectare cleared, provide the colono with seed, and in return receive half the crop. Most of the data that follow are based on an unpublished survey by the Ministerio de Agricultura y Cria (Estudio General de la Microcuenca de Estrellita, Municipio la Mesa, Distrito Urdanita, Estudo Trujillo, MS, Valera, 1963). I checked this by interviewing several household heads, which produced supplementary data on aspects of local economic development. Evidence from the survey was, however, rather inadequate on this point. While stressing the importance of limited needs in traditional society, I would be less deterministic about the unchanging or slow-changing nature of a society’s “system of needs.” Boeke’s theory fails to explain adequately the broad processes of social change that are clearly occurring in almost all traditional societies, often in an unbalanced progression from one “plateau” of needs or economic/cultural level to another. It is not suggested that other theories on the dual economy, such as those of Benjamin Higgins (Economic Development; Principles, Problems, and Policies [London: Norton; 1959]), Richard S Eckhaus (The factor proportions problem in underdeveloped areas. American Economic Review. 1955;45[4]:539–565), or Hla Myint (An interpretation of economic backwardness. Oxford Economic Papers. 1954;6[2]:150–151) are invalid or do not apply to certain countries, but they are not particularly useful in the case of Venezuela. Unfortunately, the agrarian reform does not greatly affect the Andes, a region of minifundism, as latifundios are mainly expropriated in the lowlands. Moreover, there is a tendency to limit supervised credit loans to colonos of asentamientos of the agrarian reform in an attempt to make the reform more successful. If this trend continues, the Andes will receive little capital for supervised credit (Memoria y Cuenta. Caracas: Instituto Agrario Nacional;1964:360). Wealth needs to be amassed for a “ceremonial fund” to meet the costs of fiestas. In view of the low net incomes and the size of the “replacement fund” (see endnote 19), the very low level of savings or investment is not surprising. I agree with many of the descriptive generalizations of Foster on his concept of the “image of limited good,” without agreeing with all of his explanations or implications for economic development policies. See George M Foster (Peasant society and the image of limited good. American Anthropologist. 1965;67[2]:293–315). It has been claimed that illiteracy in Venezuela has been reduced from 62% in 1950 to 25% in 1963, and that only 3% of school-aged children lack

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elementary educational facilities (E Lieuwen. Venezuela. 2nd ed. [London: Oxford University Press; 1965: p 18]). However, the number attending school is much less than 97%. A good evaluation of education in relation to the needs of modernization has been provided by George Isidore Sánchez in his Development of Education in Venezuela (Washington: US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1963). 11. Some of the main indices of social mobilization according to Deutsch are exposure to aspects of modern life through demonstrations of machinery, buildings, consumer goods, response to mass media, change of residence, urbanization, change from agricultural occupation, literacy, and growth of per capita income. I am aware that in many Third World cities, there is little upward mobility, and the work of Oscar Lewis in barriada communities of Mexico City suggests that rapid urbanization or industrialization need not imply that modernization affects all urban dwellers in a fundamental process of social change. While research is needed to verify the situation in Venezuela, there is some evidence to suggest tentatively that there have been improvements in the conditions of urban workers in the capitalist sector in recent years. As such, wage increases since 1958, increased power or political influence of collective bargaining, greatly increased government expenditure in public services, and especially the spurt to domestic manufacturing provided by import substitution may indicate that social mobilization is occurring. 12. Just as the semisubsistence agricultural systems of the Andes are only slightly involved in the national economy, so parochialism remains strong in many social questions. In the 1963 national elections, the symbols of the llanos had little appeal in the geographically distinct Andes, where the right-wing clerical party (Copei) won most votes.

References Anuario Estadística Agropecuario. Table 522. 1962. Apter DE. The Politics of Modernization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1965. Crist R. El Piedemonte llanero — andino. El Farol. 1955;159–160:1–12. Eisenstadt SN. Modernisation, growth and diversity. América Latina. 1966;9(1):346–367. Foster GM. Peasant society and the image of limited good. American Anthropologist. 1965;67(2):293–315. Griffin, KB. Reflections on Latin American development. Oxford Economic Papers. 1966;18(1):1–18. Hardy FM. Senile soils. In: Wilgus C (editor). The Caribbean: Natural Resources. Gainesville: University of Florida Press; 1959.

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Hirschman AO. Journeys Toward Progress: Studies of Economic Policy-Making in Latin America. New York: Norton; 1973. Instituto Agrario Nacional. Memoria y Cuenta. Caracas: Instituto Agrario Nacional; 1963. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The Economic Development of Venezuela. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press; 1961. Lerner D. The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York: Free Press; 1958. Lewis O. The culture of poverty. Society. 1998;35(2):7–9. Lutz, V. Italy: A study in economic development. London: Oxford University Press; 1962. Ministerio de Agricultura y Cría. Anuario Estadística Agropecuario. Caracas: División de Estadística; 1963a. Ministerio de Agricultura y Cría. Programa de Extensión de El Vigía. Caracas: Ministerio de Agricultura y Cría; 1963b. Nash M. Social prerequisites to economic growth in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Economic Development and Cultural Change. 1964;12(3):225–242. Petriceks, J. Relación entre el Área e Intensidad de la Agricultura Migratoria en Venezuela (Vol. 4). Mérida: Instituto Forestal Latino-Americano; 1959. Veillon, JP. Los Bosques de los Andes y sus Zonas de Influencia, Áreas, Masa Forestal, Crecimiento y el Dinamismo de las Deforestaciones. Comisión Promotora del Desarrollo de los Andes; 1963. Westin FC. Report to the Government of Venezuela on the Major Soils of Venezuela. Rome: FAO; 1962.

CHAPTER 9

Venezuela Revisited: 1979 and 2010—Betancourt

Sixteen years after my fieldwork, I returned briefly to the Venezuelan Andes in late 1979. I borrowed a jeep from former colleagues and drove along the Transandina Highway and through the main areas of the Andes in a rapid reconnaissance hoping to gain some idea of the rate of change. Along the main road, as one would expect, a great deal of modernization had occurred: peasant houses upgraded or painted, roads improved, and many signs of city influence and consumerism. Because many smallholdings appeared to have been amalgamated or enlarged, the almost “precapitalist” appearance of minifundism, so prevalent in 1963, was a good deal less evident. Minor feeder roads, like those of CalderasAltamira, had at last had an effect on stimulating production with improved market access. Clearly, there had been a considerable increase in motor traffic, and the Andes area was more closely bound to the rest of the nation by its transport and communication infrastructures. In the 16-year period, governments had continued the accepted policy of “sowing the oil,” and the steady and consistent investment in capital works, as well as education, health, and welfare, in the Andean states had been effective. The “capitalist solution,” together with investment by activist modernizing governments, had changed landscapes considerably and also modernized the society and economy. This is not to imply that processes I had earlier identified such as the minifundio mentality © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Watters, Rural Latin America in Transition, Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65033-9_9

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no longer existed, but rather that they had retreated spatially into smaller pockets in more isolated or higher reaches of the Sierra. When I returned once more to Venezuela in 2010, I was able to stay only a week, during which time I managed a fleeting glimpse of Caracas and parts of the Venezuelan Andes. Despite the brevity of my visit, there were clear and substantial changes to discern. Mérida was now a city of substantial size (over 704,000) and one of the main tourist centers in the country. As expected, the Andean area had developed substantially, with much-improved roads and commercial investment. Minifundism had either been eliminated with amalgamation of holdings or become less common, retreating to remote highland areas. In the 31 years since my previous visit, tens of thousands of campesinos had abandoned their smallholdings and migrated to the cities or the llanos in the tierra caliente. People still talked about the peasants (campesinos) and shifting cultivators (conuqueros ), but they survived in much more isolated locations on marginal land. Out-migration would certainly have made regional planning much easier to carry out by the Mérida state government. Along the Chama River valley, potatoes, carrots, other vegetables, and Lombardy poplars were planted on river flats and lower slopes, while steeper slopes formerly cropped had been abandoned to regenerating forest, as at Escaguey. Near Mucaruba, a man was harnessing his traditional plow team (yunta)—two bullocks pulling an ancient plow—but clearly some of the landholders now owned tractors. Comparison of some photographs taken from exactly the same spots in 1979 and 1963 reveal that some changes in ecotype were occurring: the classic paleotechnic features, such as crude winding roads and stone walls separating minifundios , of 1963 had been moderated by 1979 with upgraded or straighter infrastructure. By 2010, ecotype change had proceeded even further. While some people were still campesinos, others were more like farmers— or perhaps halfway toward that more commercial and cosmopolitan status. Certainly, the main crops—potatoes and garlic—were grown on a commercial scale, and more modern irrigation technology using plastic piping enabled intensive irrigation to be practiced, though fallowing was still part of the cropping cycle, representing a continuation of the old open-field system. Relic features still existed of the Andes I knew 47 years ago—old churches, village plazas, cobbled streets, peasant and hacienda houses— but the winds of change and capitalism had blown through the Andes. As I predicted in the 1960s, land use was now more attuned to land types, with each area serving different functions. Overall, the central Chama

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valley had a pronounced touristy character, with artisan shops, cafés, coffee “museums,” and a 200-year-old hacienda enticing tourists. The state of Mérida was one of the main holiday areas attracting city dwellers from the hot steamy lowlands to spend a week or two relaxing in the refreshing temperate climate of the Andes. Mucuchies, at 1,900 meters altitude, is now a big town and boasts a pretentious baroque hotel, as well as a trout culture center, and at El Vigia there was a dairy farm. Steep slopes that had been cropped by campesinos 50 years earlier had been abandoned to conifers and alpine trees that minimized erosion and lessened the danger of flooding on the lower, intensively cropped fields. South of Mérida, differences in land use were very apparent. Steep valley sides had been withdrawn from cropping and were covered with protective pines. Just a few fields lay near the homes, planted with maize, potatoes, and garlic. In the arid area of Ejido and Lagunillas, which had been badly eroded in the 1960s, gully and sheet erosion had wreaked further great damage: in some parts, only cacti survived in the bare earth. In the valley bottom, the same crops as before—sugar cane and plantains—were intensively cultivated, and in some places, mangoes, coconuts, and fruit trees were grown near houses. The area of aridity and advanced erosion had greatly expanded in the last 50 years and lay abandoned. Further south at La Victoria, Santa Cruz, Mesa Bolívar, and Tovar, coffee is grown at lower altitude. A lovely valley, the Rio Negro, running to the east of the Chama valley, is the heart of the coffee country. In the 1960s, coffee growing in the Andes was archaic and declining, but it has since intensified and improved its production. I was delighted to see that the great mass of ranchos —wretched shantytowns—in Caracas that had earlier covered the steep hills around the city, appeared to have gone, replaced by new houses. The visual change in Caracas was remarkable. In a brief visit to the city in 1974, I had found traffic totally gridlocked, but this time the vibrant city seemed to have overcome this problem. There was, however, a conspicuous absence of tourists visiting Caracas. Tourist agencies and many hotels appeared to be relatively quiet and cash machines hard to find. In a number of conversations with Venezuelans about the state of their country, their president and the Bolívarian Revolution, we met many people very unhappy with Chávez and his heavy-handed dominance. Of course, the sample of people we talked to in hotels and planes was heavily biased: they were mainly middle-class people who were bitterly opposed to Chávez and longed to see him voted out of power. The other half of society, comprised of the working classes, was just as passionately committed to Chávez, regarding him as their champion and savior.

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Urbanization Since the 1960s Chapter 4, based on my 1963 fieldwork, identified major issues and causes of backwardness: overpopulation, destructive and unsustainable land use, poverty, inefficiency and sociocultural qualities often associated with peasantry. Macroconditions that have prevailed since then—laissezfaire factors that are part of the “capitalist solution”—have also been important. Out-migration at a steady rate clearly lessened the pressure of population on the land, minimizing the danger of destructive and unsustainable land use and competition between landowners and tenants or conuqueros. At the microlevel, population loss can strike at the heart of the traditional peasant household economy: when children leave to work in urban areas, the very survival of the peasant enterprise falls on aging parents. Undoubtedly, many of the apparent amalgamations of minifundio that I observed when returning in 1979 were the result of this process, as well as generational changes. With the sharp reduction in the size of the household labor force, there was greater incentive for those remaining to adopt limited mechanization and other innovations to utilize the larger land area following amalgamation. When a peasant becomes an out-migrant, he can become part of the solution rather than the problem, for migration not only relieves population pressure but might also induce rising aspirations. My fieldwork among smallholders at the base of the Andes revealed that this was beginning to happen, a conclusion also reached by Erasmus (1967), who found in the same region “peasants” who were more like cash-croppers and able to afford appliances, such as washing machines and refrigerators. Indeed, their higher incomes and new motivation indicated that they were now becoming farmers, rather than peasants. In his view, this was because they now lived in a newer “Neotechnic ecotype,” rather than the old “Paleotechnic ecotype.” The issues of poverty, limited needs, and the minifundio mentality tend to break down once primitive roads are replaced by modern roading, and the peasant’s awareness of Venezuela is no longer restricted to knowledge of the number of mule-hours to the nearest town. The transistor radio, the spread of literacy, the advent of TV, and the spread of schooling, together with the influence of kin living in modern cities, also rapidly open up the closed world of peasantry in which poverty and limited needs coexist as part of a vicious circle. In 1920, 96% of the population resided in their place of birth, but by 1936 internal migration was much more pronounced. Awareness of a

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widening disparity between countryside and city meant that the migratory stream continued to pour into the metropolis and other major cities. From 1941 to 1961, the urban population doubled, and this trend continued at a very high rate in the following decades, with 3 million people leaving the countryside between 1920 and 1975 (Friedmann 1966). By the mid-1970s, Venezuela had the highest urban growth rates in Latin America and the highest rate of urbanization in the continent next to Argentina, which it finally eclipsed in 1976 when it attained an urban population of 82.6%. Although the Andes had the same high growth rate as the nation, in the decade 1961–1971 the region lost over 205,000 people to out-migration. Moreover, within the three Andean states, intraregional migration led only to slow growth, stagnation, or actual declines in rural population, while the urban centers continued to grow at a moderate rate. In the recent period of 1990–2001, the Andean states grew by a little over 400,000 or only 1.95% a year, whereas Venezuela as a whole grew by over 4.5 million (4.18% a year [Friedmann 1966]). While agrarian land reform can encourage good land-use management, conservation, agricultural and forestry extension, and the supervision of other innovations and more modern techniques, alone it cannot bring about enormous economic and social change. However the return of Acción Democrática (AD) and its allies to replace the dictatorship, together with the promotion of the mixed-economy model of democratic government led by able and determined leaders, had beneficial effects on the Venezuelan peasantry and land use, but change and growth are difficult to inculcate and sustain.

Political Development: The Role of Rómulo Betancourt1 When AD won the December 1958 election after the overthrow of the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship, Betancourt set forth his goals. He would preside over a coalition government that would attack the fiscal, educational, social, and developmental problems of Venezuela. He declared he would exclude only the communists, and divided cabinet positions between the Democratic Republican Union (independent), AD (left wing), Christian Democratic Party (COPEI; right wing), and other independents in a coalition government of unity. For the first half of his administration, Betancourt had to deal with an economic–fiscal crisis.

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He also faced recalcitrant opposition from both left- and right-wing opponents who rejected political democracy and would use either insurrection in the streets or guerrilla warfare in the mountains if necessary to overthrow the government (in 1959, Betancourt was wounded in an assassination attempt). He did however have several great advantages: compared to other Latin American countries, Venezuela was very well endowed, with its substantial and dependable oil income, and the coalition government comprised parties that were well disciplined, well led, and had clear objectives. Betancourt’s tactics were masterly in this difficult situation. He insisted on free elections in which all could participate, but in which the losers could not challenge the results (Photo 9.1). A change in power no longer meant the obliteration of any interest or political group participating in politics. Betancourt was tireless in knowing everyone of importance. If the danger of a military coup were to be minimized, he judged it prudent to keep in touch with officers of the armed forces and ensure the military was well funded by government. Moreover, although he was an emotional

Photo 9.1 A peasant boy and his donkey passes the image of President Betancourt

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man, he learnt great self-control and became a very calculating politician with an ability for maneuver. While in the Pérez Jiménez years, many AD supporters returned from exile only to be imprisoned, tortured, or even killed, Betancourt refused to resort to el paredon (the firing squad) to deal with those who revolted against constitutional government. He made a clear distinction between strong democratic leadership and dictatorial abuse of power, a distinction that had not been clear in Venezuela and indeed in Latin America until that time. When Betancourt turned over power to his chosen successors in 1963, and also when he acquiesced in the transfer of power from AD to COPEI in 1969 and 1979, he showed himself to be a true democrat. More than anyone, he built “Venedemocracia.” Betancourt was also a superb organizer. In the underground period after 1936, he put together the skeleton of a party organization, bringing in cadres around which AD was to be built. In the years before 1965, when he was secretary-general of AD, he tirelessly toured the country, building up units of the party even in remote areas. As a young man, he was probably influenced by the ideas of the great Peruvian ideologue Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre on the advocacy of a multiclass party to lead the process of transforming Venezuela. He realized through his study the folly of trying to organize a single-class workers’ party, as advocated by the communists and socialists, as the proletariat constituted only a tiny minority of Venezuela’s population. Although AD’s policies had to appeal to the peasantry, the largest segment of society in the 1960s, a multiclass party was the real goal, which should emerge as a natural consequence of rapid modernization. The government made great strides in education. Between 1958 and 1963, school attendance grew from approximately 1 million to 1.7 million and illiteracy reduced to only 21% of the population aged 15 years or older. As many as 6,300 new classrooms were constructed. Numbers of secondary school students increased from just over 76,000 in 1957–1958 to 227,000 in 1962–1963, while university enrollment grew from 10,270 students in 1957–1958 to 35,000 in 1962–1963 (Alexander 1982; Ewell 1984). A firm adherent of the mixed-economy model, in his early writing in Ahora in the 1930s, Betancourt argued that the private sector alone could not carry out the economic development of Venezuela. It would not undertake the risks and assume the initiative that true private entrepreneurs would provide. With huge oil income flowing through his

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hands, Betancourt fully accepted that the state had to take the lead in developing the new broad-based economy he envisaged for Venezuela: he saw the state as the correct owner and driver of the oil industry. In his Trienio period of power (1945–1948), he negotiated with US steel firms to establish a joint enterprise to pioneer the steel industry, and in the 1960s established the government-owned steel firm. The most important of AD’s policies was the decision not to monopolize the petroleum benefits for a reduced section of Venezuela’s interest groups, as had been done in the Trienio, leading to the military coup that exiled AD’s leadership for ten years. Instead, the state discovered that it might be possible not to deny any important Venezuelan interest group a share of national prosperity. While acrimonious and sometimes-violent confrontations occurred at times over resource allocation, in the longer term few important interest groups were prepared to lose their share in “petro-prosperity” by breaking completely with the consensus managers of national wealth. It is of course accurate but easy to criticize Venezuela’s elites for the extravagant expansion of Caracas, their neglect of agriculture and rural and social development, and what appears to have been a slavish superficial imitation of the North Atlantic model. Having said that, Venezuela’s experience is remarkable in spite of the huge amounts squandered or mis invested and in the achievements that basic investments have actually made. In many ways, it had become the envy of the rest of Latin America. My view after my brief visit in 2010 is that this is still partly true, although the evidence of great squandering of that wealth through inefficiency suggests some qualification of that assessment.

Agriculture and “Agrarian Reform” in the Llanos The biggest problem in Venezuelan agriculture is the gross underutilization of the llanos—the vast, ill-drained plain of the Orinoco and its tributaries. From mid-April to November, 1,400–1,900 millimeters of rain falls mainly as torrential downpours that quickly flood the relatively impermeable soil. Following this, five almost-totally dry months occur. As the experienced French agronomist René Dumont pointed out in the 1960s, the secret to utilizing the rainfall to maximum benefit lay in planting fodder grasses and crops, including grass silage cut at the end of the rains, which was not done, but would have resolved the problem of food shortage for livestock. Burning, however, has always been practiced to encourage resprouting grasses, but the results are meager and the soil

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robbed of humus, nitrogen, and all mineral elements, since most ash is blown away or washed away by rain. Over time, the plain is degenerating and leaving only the coarsest of fodder. Venezuela was once a country that had a flourishing stock-raising industry. With a national herd of about 8 million head, in 1883 they were exporters of meat, but the herd had declined to under 3 million by 1920. Huge derelict cathedrals and evidence of earlier towns of about 6,000 people that have since shrunk to mere hamlets bear witness to a more productive past and a failure to adapt to an increasingly impoverished savannah, aggravated by the invasion of the spiny acacia (Dumont 1965, pp 11–29) (Photo 9.2). Guarico, like Bolívar, is a “stock-rearing state,” which means the rancher was not obliged to fence in his cattle, which often cross the boundaries of properties. A survey of the region in the 1960s showed 69 big estates (hatos ) larger than 500 hectares covered 98% of the total area, although representing only 16% of the total number of holdings. In contrast, 84% of the holdings, covering only 2% of the total area, were

Photo 9.2 A fly blown butcher’s shop in the hot tropical heat, East Andes

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worked by conuqueros: Indians, metis, or squatters who each scratched a subsistence living from only about 2 hectares of land (Alexander 1964).2 Annually, a sale of only 81 head of cattle occurred, at 319 kilograms average, or 4.6 kilograms per hectare per annum—almost a world record for extensive farming. Only a tenth of the herd was sold each year, and the national average was only 8%. It is not surprising that the cattle were nourished in a very irregular way. Since their diet was low in phosphates, protein, and calcium, the calving rate was low—only 62 per 100 cows. Mortality was also high, with only 47 of every 100 calves reaching the age of 6 months. The cows were poor milkers, giving only 500–600 liters in the 6 months of the rainy season and less in the dry season when fodder was scarce. Far too much scarce milk was used for making white salt cheese. The real cultivators of the almost-uncultivated vast plain were the natives: Indians or squatters who used to have the illimitable llanos all to themselves. On most great estates, there were six or eight of these conuquero families, each working two or so hectares for three to five years with machete and hoe. They preferred to clear the scattered remnants of forest. They had about 25 fowls, two or three small pigs, a couple of donkeys, and a cow. They grew maize, beans or frijoles, plantains, and a little sugar cane, whose syrup was used to sweeten their coffee. Although the llanero on the hato worked for less than half a day per hectare per year, the conuquero spent 60–80 days per hectare on his own plot, although his return was worth barely US$100 gross. The minimum subsistence level in the mid-1950s was about US$500 per family, but cultivation of 2 hectares would produce little more than a quarter of this (Latin America Economic Report 1977). The number of people on minifundio by the mid-1950s was ten times greater than it had been 20 years earlier, though 56% of holdings were carried on by conuqueros with no property rights whatsoever and 42% of the agricultural population were wage workers. All the elements were thus in place for an agrarian reform that would deliver most of the unproductive lands of the great landowners into the hands of the conuqueros when the dictator Pérez Jiménez founded the National Agrarian Institute in 1949, an official organization for development that was intended to “whiten the race” by favoring the upper classes. In the 1950s, an “agrarian reform” was carried out when a “colonization group” arrived in Carabobo, capital of Guárico state. Attractive but ill-constructed big villas were built for the future ranchers and wonderful

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farm buildings. As usual in Venezuela, the government tried to solve a problem by throwing a lot of money at it. The whole scheme cost far too much, and loans had an exorbitant interest rate and had to be paid back in four or five years. Each lot of 200 hectares was to have 100 local cows, four Simmental bulls (two too many), and 50 pigs. At least 15 hectares were to be sown in yaragua (Hyparrhenia rufa), although pangola (Digitaria decumbens ) had already proved its superiority in the conditions (Alexander 1982, p 509). Dumont’s findings in Guarico were remarkably similar to mine in parts of Barinas and Zulia states. Many policies defied common sense: many loans to finance stock rearing were ordered to be diverted for rice growing, but three rice harvests were lost, as the water in ditches was often expected to flow uphill. A costly system of irrigation canals was not required when direct pumping could be done from the water tables. A huge dam, built to form a vast reservoir, could only be filled a third full, as it was not built on sound foundations. Indeed, often it would not have been necessary to irrigate at all if cultivated fodder stocks and grass silage, cut at the end of the rains, had been properly established, at much less cost. It was unrealistic in this underpopulated country to attempt to pass straight from random gathering of the natural flora—the ultra extensive system—to the most intensive system possible: irrigation by spraying. The main priority was for every estate to be certain of at least a limited supply of cultivated fodder to tide over the scarcity of the dry season. If the objective had been to carry out real agrarian reform, every settler, including conuqueros, would have been given 200 hectares of natural pasture and 20–50 hectares of drained land for cultivating fodder, including 5–10 hectares suitable for irrigation. Artificial meadowlands would have been established on the richest soil—alluvial deposits along rivers, where pumping would also have been easy. On the ridges, drainage would be easy. Only 1%–5% of the area would need irrigation, done at less cost. Therefore, the degree of intensiveness would have been closely related to the differing potential of each type of land, but with the production of fodder reserves, the natural pastureland could be rationed and rotated. With periodic resting, it could slowly be improved, and in time burning could be prohibited. This could be achieved with plowing the heavy dense soils (using caterpillars instead of wheeled tractors). Planting pangola could produce yields of 200–400 kilograms of meat per hectare, double this with fertilizer, and perhaps three times this if irrigation was

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included too, ie, 50–250 times the yield of 5 kilograms per hectare that Dumont found in the 1950s–1960s. For over a quarter of a century, Betancourt advocated agrarian reform. An Agrarian Reform Commission was established in 1958, composed of representatives of the four main parties, and after thorough study it produced an agrarian reform law that was passed in 1960. Dispossessed private landowners were compensated, but peasants receiving land paid nothing. Extensive efforts were made to achieve an integral agrarian reform as described for Mexico (see Chapter 3) to supply credit, give technical assistance, begin building local roads, and supply adequate housing, sewage, water, schools, and health clinics. Although few peasants were given access to all these amenities, most received some of them. The majority of the land expropriated from private farmers was in the central states of Miranda, Aragua, and Corobobo, where the pressure on land was the greatest. In 1968, Betancourt summed up his land-reform achievement: Now 350,000 peasants are not drinking putrid water from wells, but pure drinking water from rural water systems. Now 150,000 peasants are not vegetating in huts, precarious huts with dirt floors, without sanitary facilities, but are living in healthy homes, bright and their own. … Much more than 500 million bolivars have been invested in acquiring and improving haciendas, 62,000 peasant families have been settled, and more than 1.5 million hectares have been distributed. (Alexander 1982) (Photo 9.3)

However, I would make several criticisms of his commendable effort. AD’s policies and programs always had a clear bias toward peasant groups affiliated with or loyal to AD. Like the PRI, the government party in Mexico, AD fostered a clientage role among the masses and through the peasant unions and did not make a large-enough effort to reach and benefit the truly poor. I have seen in the field enormous wastage of investment, e.g., in irrigation systems that were incompetently designed and the water did not even flow. Many of the agricultural extension officers had been inadequately trained and were very deficient in practical handson experience. The term used by campesinos to refer to them, perritos (puppy dogs), is apt. In Dumont’s view, AD’s agrarian reform in the 1950s was a revolution for nothing—a “Revolution to no purpose,” as one young Venezuelan said. It was simply a program listing the problems to be solved, but not

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Photo 9.3 A small peasant house

resolving any. One clause in the law completely negated and disabled it. To decree that all state lands must be expropriated first is “equivalent to deferring the agrarian reform until kingdom come.” The areas are immense, generally of poor quality, except those under forest (which should be preserved), and a great part of it was inaccessible (Dumont 1965). The great priority was to begin reform with private estates that were not fulfilling a social function, being grossly underutilized or neglected. The need was for reform that involved intensification. That, however, would jeopardize the real interests at stake: the economic, political, and social predominance of the great and wealthy landowners of Venezuela. The kindest interpretation is that Betancourt and other AD leaders were city dwellers who, suffering urban bias, were basically ignorant of what needed to be done to farm the llanos productively. That is likely to be correct, but since they did not take steps to become informed, a more cynical view may be sounder. How are we to assess Betancourt in general? He always saw Venezuela in the larger context of Latin America and the Western Hemisphere. He

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was an advocate of Bolívarism, in the sense that he supported the ideas of Simón Bolívar concerning the unity of actions of Latin American nations. In earlier years, he had strongly criticized the behavior of the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, and he consistently criticized the exploitation of Venezuela by US and other oil companies. When in 1975, voices were raised in the Ford administration suggesting a possible invasion of Venezuela to assure US control over its oil resources, he expressed the wider Venezuelan willingness to fight if required against any invaders and if necessary to destroy oil fields to thwart them, but he was not an extreme nationalist and was not anti-Yankee. He was staunchly opposed to the triumph of either fascism or communism on a world scale and believed in the value of an alliance of the democratic left in Latin America with liberal and progressive elements, including the organized-labor movement in the US. Betancourt was a long-term supporter of the Organization of American States and thought of himself definitely as a Latin American leader, even a Western Hemisphere leader, but not a Third World one. Although Betancourt did sponsor and support OPEC on oil policy, he felt Venezuela had little in common politically with the many military or personal dictatorships in most of Africa and Asia. Rather, he believed that in the decades since the Second World War, Latin America was in many ways more advanced than most of the Third World on its journey from underdevelopment to development.

Later Political Developments Leoni continued the sound policies of AD, especially in urban-labor spheres, and for the second time the ruling party handed over government peacefully to Rafael Caldera Rodriguez of COPEI in 1969. He governed effectively, eliminated guerrilla activities, nationalized foreign enterprises, and in 1973 Venezuela joined the Andean Common Market. In 1973, Andrés Pérez won the election and attempted to improve Venezuela’s foreign relations, especially with neighbors and Cuba (against Betancourt’s advice). He expressed hostility to the military dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile and became increasingly independent in relation to the US. He nationalized the iron and steel industry in 1975 and the petroleum industry the following year, creating a new state oil company—PDVSA.

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For the first time in decades, there was a contraction of 1.8% in agricultural output, perhaps because of the “petrolification” effect. There was a flight of capital out of agriculture to other more profitable ventures, such as real estate. In the 1983 survey, 25 years after the agrarian reform began, the program was found to be limping along, due to land misuse, delays in granting titles, and low productivity resulting from poor education. As many as 49% of campesinos under the agrarian reform were illiterate, only 28% used fertilizers, and 28% used certified seed and machinery. Of the 2,600 existing agrarian settlements, only 700 produced a surplus in 1985 and peasants continued to invade haciendas (Alexander 1982, p 509). In 1978, the COPEI candidate Luis Herrera Campins won the election. He expressed sympathy for the poor, but the populace did not sense any real concern. His government failed to achieve an increase in food production, and prospects for the oil economy darkened. Lusinchi and then André Peréz won the next elections for AD in 1983 and 1988, but by early 1989 consumer price increases had led to austerity programs being imposed that resulted in violent protests in Caracas. It was clear by the 1980s that just as in Mexico, monumental problems were associated with the much-greater petrolification of the state. The strongly centralized government had no fiscal control over its subordinate agencies. Neither Pérez nor Herrera was able to form a capable and honest administration team or to implement administration reforms. As Betancourt himself said in 1985, “The machinery of the Venezuelan government is heavy, asphyxiating, and inefficient, and the change to a modernized administration is not made easily” (Alexander 1982, p 632). Although a larger investment was made in agriculture, as he said, “more bolivars doesn’t immediately increase agricultural and grazing production.” In 1992, two attempts at military coups were crushed, but Pérez was suspended from office in May 1993 after the senate voted unanimously to put him on trial for embezzlement and misuse of public funds. As Judith Ewell has said: Herrera and Pérez were victims of history … They reaped the harvest from the accumulated problems which previous administrators had not been able or willing to solve. Ironically, great wealth strained the system’s weak links more than the average revenues of earlier years had done … Herrera and Pérez had learned to deal with political and ideological dilemmas. Their experience had not prepared them to be efficient managers of complex modern businesses lodged within a complex modern state. (Ewell 1984, p 219)

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The elderly Rafael Caldera again took charge, but a banking crisis in 1994 led to austerity measures being introduced and a large loan agreed with the IMF. By July 1997, the former paratrooper Colonel Hugo Chávez Frias, leader of one of the abortive coups of 1992, emerged as a serious political contender.

The Evolution of the Petro-State and Its Consequences While Ewell’s assessment was correct, it did not go far enough. Many of the problems arose largely from the new structure of the Venezuelan “petro-state.” The term “petro-state” is used to describe a state where oil or natural gas contributes 50%–70% or often 90% of GDP. As the decades passed, Venezuela found out, like other petro-states, that serious challenges emerged, threatening long-term economic development and undermining the gains made by economic distortions, which resulted in consequent political and social ailments. Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso, energy minister in the AD government after 1958 and one of the founders of OPEC, went so far as to decry petroleum in his retirement years. He called it the “excrement of the devil.” He saw that the impact of the oil revenues on the state, economy, and society was often harmful, and psychological attitudes and motivations were also affected. Oil wealth was frequently wasted, and the nation’s view of itself could be degraded as it succumbed to the allures of the “resource curse.” Competition for oil revenue and struggles over its distribution became the primary drama in Venezuela, leading to both patronage and clientelism and what is termed “rent-seeking behavior.” Entrepreneurship, hard work, innovation: all become casualties in the wake of the most important “business,” which was focused on getting some of the “rents” from oil—some share of the government’s revenue. Gradually, as the architecture of the petro-state was built, the system became more and more inflexible as the economy lost the ability to adapt and change. As the state-controlled economy grew, subsidies, regulations, controls, bureaucracy, grandiose projects, and excessive micromanagement grew too, and along with them corruption as well. Nature had endowed Venezuela with untold riches that did not depend on the productivity or enterprise of the nation’s people.

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Two other characteristics occurred in the petro-state: Dutch disease and fiscal rigidity. Dutch disease repeated the experience of the Netherlands when new gas wealth flowed into the country in the 1960s, leading to an overvaluation of the national currency, which made exports relatively more expensive and thus sent them into decline. At the same time, cheaper imports flooded in and made domestic businesses less competitive, with inflation becoming more embedded. Jobs were lost and many businesses closed down. A partial cure or preventive medicine for Dutch disease is to set up sovereign-wealth funds that absorb much of the sudden influx of large revenue and prevent them from flooding the economy. The second characteristic that is even more debilitating is the fiscal rigidity that appears, which often seems to be incurable. Governments spend more and more to deal with it, and this has been called “the reversed Midas touch.” Of course, the volatility of oil prices is reflected in the variability in government revenue. When prices rise suddenly, society’s rising expectations also soar and governments are obliged to hand out more subsidies, to create more social programs, and to launch more new projects. Although oil generates a great deal of revenue, it is nonetheless capital-intensive and so creates relatively few jobs, requiring more government spending on welfare and entitlements. When in contrast, world oil prices fall, government revenue is much reduced, although contracts have been let, budgets funded, institutions set up, jobs created, and many people hired. Governments are thus committed and indeed locked into ever-increasing spending to avoid social uprisings and political backlash. Invariably, they have to continue to provide very cheap oil, water, and gas, which the populace believes is their entitlement when they live in an energy-exporting country (Yergin 2011, pp 106–115). Most oil- and natural gas-producing countries are seriously affected by these unfortunate consequences. In the 1980s, Mexico experienced such conditions, leading to economic and political crises. Bigger countries like Russia and Mexico today are more broadly based industrial economies, and although such issues can affect them badly, they are better equipped to ride out such economic storms. However, when countries lack diversified industries, they can be very seriously affected. In Venezuela, problems of petrolification in the petro-state were made worse by the rapid growth in population, which almost doubled over two decades, and massive emigration from the countryside to the everexpanding shantytowns and slums of the cities, especially Caracas. As

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much as anyone, President Carlos Andrés Pérez became the architect of the Venezuelan petro-state. His vision of “Le Gran Venezuela” was of an increasingly industrialized, self-sufficient nation that (fueled by oil) would catch up with the countries of the developed world. He continued Betancourt’s policy of “sowing the oil,” and in 1976, in accord with the wave of resource nationalism sweeping the world, he carefully nationalized the oil industry. He made sure that 95% of jobs in the industry, including management, were held by Venezuelans. After the high oil prices of the 1970s, the 1980s were a time of crisis and gloom when prices crashed. Inflation and unemployment rose rapidly, and the population below the poverty line expanded steadily. Andrés Pérez traveled the world looking at different models for economic development and solutions for managing a petro-state. When he won back the presidency in 1989, he was determined to reverse course: he launched reforms, reduced controls on the economy, cut back on spending, and strengthened the safety net for the poor. The economy began to respond, but he was opposed by traditional parties and the interest groups who depended on distribution of rents and favors. Major riots broke out in Caracas. By the mid-1990s, Venezuela’s economy was in a bad way, leading to a severe banking crisis. It became clear to the then-new president of the oil company PDVSA, petroleum engineer Luis Giusti, that since petroleum prices were not going up, the only way to raise revenue was to increase the number of barrels that Venezuela produced. This seemed to be a better solution than trying to undo the petro-state, as Andrés Pérez had unsuccessfully attempted to do.

La Apertura The campaign to rapidly step up investment and output was a significant initiative that had global impact. It was called La Apertura (the opening) and focused on reopening the Venezuelan oil industry to overseas investment in partnership with PDVSA, with the goal of producing more oil and accessing more technologically challenging oil reserves. It did not mean a denationalization but rather, in the new age of globalization, greater openness in a pragmatic move to mobilize very large international funds for investment. Of course, La Apertura was very controversial and seen to be heresy by those who supported the nationalist route of nationalization, state

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control, and expulsion of the “foreigner,” but Giusti was opposed to all ideology and only concerned with results and revenue. The state could not fund the full range of new changes and upgrading needed, nor could it continue to fund the important social programs. Moreover, PDVSA did not have the advanced technology needed. La Apertura held the prospect of Venezuela doubling its production capacity by 5 million barrels over six or seven years, and the state would capture the great bulk of the additional revenue through taxation and partnership. The most difficult part of the plan was the politics. Giusti had to navigate his way through perilous seas to win President Rafael Caldera’s approval. Caldera was a very experienced politician, a conservative, and a skilled lawyer. He was also perhaps a rarity among Venezuelan politicians of the time in that he was a man of integrity. The detailed plan for La Apertura was printed in two handsome volumes, but Giusti noticed in a meeting with Caldera that the president had put paper clips on very many pages. He realized he would probably lose an argument if it was based on detailed legal issues. How could he persuade Caldera to reverse one of the most basic and popular principles of Venezuelan politics based on nationalism? He had an idea: Why not paint a picture—the whole picture—for Caldera? He realized that a brilliant geologist, Tito Boesi, was also an able landscape painter. Giusti called Boesi and commissioned a large canvas mural that would show every stage of Venezuela’s oiltechnology development: from the seepage that had attracted the first explorers to the application of various generations of technologies up to what might be thought to be the future of the Orinoco. The purpose would be to demonstrate vividly how increasingly complicated and expensive it would be to further the development of Venezuela’s petroleum patrimony. Furthermore, he said he needed the painting immediately. Boesi told the engineer he was crazy, but accepted the assignment when he was assured it did not have to be a masterpiece. Summoned to the president’s house a few days later for an important meeting, Giusti unrolled the canvas on the long conference table and explained the details of the picture. A few days later, Caldera approved La Apertura. Over the next few years, as the contracts were negotiated and implemented, La Apertura brought tens of billions of dollars of international investment into the country, jump-starting the development of the vast oil sands, the Faja, and reversing the decline of older fields by the injection of new technologies (Yergin 2011, pp 116–119).

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As the late 1990s unfolded, Venezuela plunged into a new economic crisis. Oil prices by late 1998 had fallen to under $10 a barrel. Poverty was spreading rapidly and social tensions escalating. The two dominant parties of the past, AD and COPEI, were by now thoroughly discredited. As President Rafael Caldera’s term came to an end, he had no fear of the former rebel Hugo Chávez. He had possessed the power when the 1992 rebellion collapsed of refusing to allow any of the leaders ever to stand for office, but when they were released in 1994 they were granted an amnesty. Perhaps he regarded the rebels as merely hotheaded young men who did not seriously threaten the state. Perhaps he reflected that Chávez’s father, a supporter of his party COPEI who welcomed him when he visited Barinas state, deserved leniency to be extended to his son. Like many others, Caldera had seriously underestimated the young army officer. When in 1992, he was asked by the government to go on television to urge his supporters to surrender when the revolt had clearly failed, Chávez showed his potential in an electric two-minute performance, urging his supporters in other cities outside Caracas to surrender: “Unfortunately, for now, the objectives we sought were not achieved in the capital city.” The failed rebel was instantly transformed into a charismatic caudillo and the words “for now” were seized upon by the expectant masses. At election times, it was customary for the head of PDVSA to brief candidates on the oil industry. The able Giusti had become somewhat controversial for his advocacy of La Apertura and full-scale production. When Chávez had his turn, he insisted on a one-on-one meeting, at which Giusti gave him a 90-minute briefing on the state of the industry. Chávez thanked Giusti profusely for his helpful presentation and again at the door repeated his appreciation and warm affection. He then descended the steps to the waiting press and announced that as soon as he won the election, he would dismiss Giusti. Between 1992 and 1998, Venezuela increased its oil production by the incredible figure of 40%, disregarding the quota set by OPEC and producing at its maximum. Other OPEC countries were strongly opposed to this strategy, and an oil war ensued between Venezuela, ignoring oil quotas, and Saudi Arabia, insisting that they be observed. The battle was resolved in November 1997 when it was agreed all exporters would produce as fast as they could, which was already happening (Yergin 2011, p 120).

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At that point, the Asian financial crisis began to trigger a collapse in oil prices, and Venezuela recognized it could no longer afford its marketshare strategy. In March 1998, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and non-OPEC Mexico met and worked out a set of production cutbacks for exporters, but it was not enough to deal with the drop in demand, and soon, after a brief recovery, oil prices fell to $10 and then to single digits.

Notes 1. See especially Robert J Alexander’s The Venezuelan Democratic Revolution (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press; 1964). 2. My own fieldwork in Barinas province found that many settlers on asentamientos (planned settlements established under the agrarian reform) had been awarded unviable plots. The effects of the reform were clearly very limited. See also Dumont’s Terres Vivantes (Paris: Plon; 1961:21–23).

References Alexander RJ. The Venezuelan Democratic Revolution. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press; 1964. Alexander RJ. Rómulo Betancourt and the Transformation of Venezuela. New Brunswick: Transaction Books; 1982. Dumont R. Terres Vivantes. Paris: Plon; 1961. Dumont R Betancourt. Venezuela hesitates over agrarian reform. In: Lands Alive (Terres Vivantes) (pp 11–29). London: Merlin Press; 1965. Dumont R. Lands Alive (Terres Vivantes). London: Merlin Press; 1965. Erasmus CJ. Upper limits of peasantry and agrarian reform: Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico compared. Ethnology. 1967;6(4):349–380. Ewell J. Venezuela: A Century of Change. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press; 1984. Friedmann J. Regional Development Policy: A Case Study of Venezuela. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 1966. Latin America Economic Report, Volumes 5–6, Latin American Newsletters Limited; 1977. Yergin D. The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World. London: Penguin; 2011.

CHAPTER 10

The Economic Crisis and the Chávez Presidency

When he came to power, Hugo Chávez Frias was seen to be a hero to many for challenging what was believed to have been a corrupt regime that squandered the nation’s vast oil wealth. The poor were attracted to Chávez’s radical proposals of constitutional reform, nationalist oil policy, and plans for redistribution of oil wealth, and at the same time Chávez promised to improve the standard of living, attack poverty, and maintain stability. Two friends who became influential supporters of Chávez and his new political party, the Fifth Republican Movement, were the German Marxist Bernard Mommer, who had been an advisor to the principal guerrilla group and who later worked for the national oil company PDVSA, and a former guerrilla leader—Alí Rodríguez. Economic nationalists, such as Mommer (who had worked at the Oxford Energy Institute) and Rodríguez, backed the oil policy. After Chávez was elected to power, Rodríguez went to Vienna to become the secretary-general of OPEC, and later Mommer became his assistant before returning to Venezuela in 2005 to be vice-minister for hydrocarbons. The election date had to be postponed because of huge mudslides and floods in December in which at least 30,000 people died and 200,000 were made homeless, an indication of the irrationality of policies and lack of planning on the steep

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outskirts of Caracas, where many people lived in flimsy ranchos. In the July elections, Chávez won with 59% of the vote. Nearly everyone was uncertain how the 42-year-old lieutenant colonel would govern. Would he be an authoritarian or democratic ruler? Chávez stated: “If you are attempting to determine whether Chávez is of the left, right, or center, if he’s a socialist, communist, or capitalist, well I am none of those, but I have a bit of all of those.” He refused to be typecast. Irrespective of ideology, Chávez moved decisively and swiftly to concentrate most of the power in his own hands. While he kept the formal trappings of state (although he called them “worm-eaten”), he quickly produced and pushed through a new constitution that dispensed with the upper house and won 92% of the vote in a constitutional referendum. Soon, the remaining house was turned into his rubber stamp. Then, he increased the number of Supreme Court judges from 20 to 32, packing the judiciary with revolucionistas (revolutionaries). He took control of the National Electoral Council, ensuring that his own personal political machine would count the ballots in future elections. Congressional oversight of the army was removed and he also set up a second military force of urban reservists. Then, he rechristened Venezuela, calling it the Bolívarian Republic (Kozloff 2008, p 20). For some time, Chávez and many of his supporters had feared that US interests were becoming increasingly anxious to gain control of the nation’s petroleum industry. As the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter and owner of some of the largest reserves in the world, Venezuela’s new government took steps to encourage greater integration in the region. An economic accord was achieved, with Fidel Castro and Chávez signing an agreement to supply cheap oil to Central American and Caribbean countries. He also made a state visit to Baghdad in August 2000 in defiance of US-led sanctions against Iraq. By November, Congress approved new powers for the president to make law by decree. By the time the powers of decree lapsed a year later, 49 laws had been passed dealing with the oil industry, land reform, and the banking sector. There was strike action in December 2001, and in April 2002 a large crowd gathered in Caracas to protest against government policies. After a violent confrontation, gunmen fired on the crowd, killing at least ten people. High-ranking military officers took control of the country, and Chávez was forced to resign the presidency. The main issue was Chávez’s decision to replace the national petroleum company’s board of directors with one made up of his supporters. The existing board believed

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this would not only be undesirable but would also affect the price of petroleum. The strike and protest were led by executives and workers of the petroleum company. The crisis steadily built up, with the opposition, increasingly well organized, initiating a nationwide strike by employers. Poor workers were to be locked out of their factories, shops, and offices until Chávez fell, but such tactics only encouraged poor neighborhoods to become more defiant, more organized, and more self-reliant. Chávez was even more determined not to return domination of Venezuela’s economic, social, and political life to the elites or to allow the “Washington consensus” and its allies to resume siphoning oil out of the country as it had done in the past. Although almost all the media campaigned against him, Chávez displayed an uncanny knowledge of the constituency. Realizing that 65% of households were headed by women and that the poor are invariably voiceless and powerless in the political process, he devised a new constitution based on genuine participatory democracy. His pueblo protagónio (people as protagonists) approach placed people right in the center of the political debate, with workers representing themselves, rather than being represented by higherclass, lighter-skinned people. The constitution, won after four months of continuous lobbying, actually was a people-first constitution. Among its antisexist, antiracist provisions, it recognized women’s unpaid caring work as economically productive, entitling housewives to social security (“Chávez’s mission to get out the vote” 2004). It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that it was women of African and indigenous descent who led the million people down from the shantytowns on the hills to reverse the coup, so saving their constitution, their president, their participatory democracy, and their revolution. Knowing that the opposition would regroup and attack again, Chávez launched a strong campaign against inequality, with education and health care given priority. Many people believe that governments in Venezuela have neglected education and health for the last 40 years, but as we have seen, there was a great increase in schooling up to the late 1970s. Although only 4% of Venezuelans are illiterate, as oil income fell in the 1980s, so did the quality of education and health care. In 2004, for every hundred children who entered primary school, a mere 16 completed secondary school. Chávez’s trump card was the “missions.” After two attempts to tackle illiteracy had failed, Chávez’s ally Fidel Castro stepped in to supply teaching materials and teachers. The “Robinson Mission,”

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named after a pseudonym used by Simón Rodríguez, a nineteenthcentury educational pioneer venerated by Chávez, led to a proliferation of community missions in basic education and health care. Up to the middle of 2004, over 700,000 of the 1.5 million Venezuelans who had never completed high school enrolled. Critics did however point out that the missions cost too much to sustain over the long run and that there was a clear political motivation. It is true that like Betancourt’s AD, Chávez hoped that beneficiaries of the missions could be captured to become political followers. As unemployment grew from around 12 to over 17% after Chávez took office in 1999, he became increasingly desperate to finance his policies for the poor and unemployed. He forced the petroleum company to devote 30% of its investment budget to social projects. It set up a social fund of $2 billion into which it placed $750 million in cash (“Chávez launches farm offensive” 2005). After their failed coup, the opposition forces (who lacked a leader and a clear message) rallied to overturn the new constitution that mandated the new policies. If they could collect more than a million signatures, they would force a presidential-recall referendum. When they succeeded in doing this by gathering 2 million signatures, Chávez showed that while he may be a populist, he tried not to be seen as a caudillo in modern clothing, but a genuine democrat. Unlike Pinochet, he never called the soldiers out of the barracks to put down his opponents or engage in political repression. The recall referendum was held in August 2004. In spite of the enormous wealth held by the rich and middle classes of the country, their incitement to open treason against what might have been a democratically elected government, the control of 80% of the news media, and the covert support of the US, they could not defeat the Venezuelan poor. In the biggest poll the country had ever recorded, Chávez won by over 58%. His supporters asked: “How many heads of state would have the courage to put their popularity to the test before finishing their term?” In so doing, he gave a democratic lesson to his opponents and at the same time called for national reconciliation.

Venezuelan Revolution and the Chávez Legacy How successful was Chávez’s participatory revolution, and was he able to recoup and extend the valuable gains made by Betancourt several decades earlier? In rural areas, Chávez launched his offensive against huge estates

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early in 2005, when he signed a decree on the reorganization of property and use of farmland. The government claimed to have identified 500 properties not being farmed and 56 oversized estates, totaling 10.21 million hectares (“Chávez launches farm offensive” 2005). The first target was the huge 13,000-hectare estate that the British meat giant the Vestey family had owned since 1903: the government claimed property rights over 3,480 hectares. The war on oversized estates was regarded as central to the Bolívarian revolution’s intention of settling small farmers on confiscated land. The disputed land law passed in 2001 had never come into force, and Chávez was determined to bring about agrarian reform and land distribution as a foundation for participatory democracy and equality in Venezuela. In line with the progressive vision of Rodriguez and Mommer, the government also took the old idea of “sowing the oil” to a new level, such that PDVSA became not just a company but a national symbol and social instrument. Soon, Chávez launched the so-called oil and gas social districts, essentially territorial units where the company promised to allocate over $6 billion a year to encourage social-development programs. This idea was that the distribution of oil wealth throughout the country would facilitate demographic “deconcentration” and thus lessen the massive rural–urban migration. The oil-sowing plan was innovative in that communities designed their own oil-sowing projects with PDVSA providing the funding, which gave credence to Chávez’s claim that he was creating an authentic participatory democracy. The company claimed there was no precedent anywhere in the world for a program like it. As Rafael Ramírez, PDVSA president, said: “The PDVSA that neglected the people, and indifferently watched the misery and poverty in the communities surrounding the company premises, is over. Now the oil industry takes concrete actions to deepen the revolutionary distribution of the revenues among the people” (Kozloff 2008, p 21). In 2005, PDVSA paid out $6.9 billion to such social programs as Misión Ribas (adult education), Misión Sucre (university scholarships), Misión Vuelvan Caras (economic cooperatives), Misión Guaicaipuro (indigenous land titling), Misión Barrio Adentro (community health), Misión Mercal (subsidized food markets), and Misión Milagro (eye operations). Initiated in August 2004, Misión Milagro enjoyed the support of Cuban President Fidel Castro. Designed to provide “the universal right to health under the principles of equality, solidarity, accessibility, and justice,” Misión Milagro,

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which is free, aims to perform eye surgery on 300,000 Venezuelans and 300,000 Cubans (Kozloff 2008). It is interesting to recall one of the ironies of history. On October 9, 1967, when trying to spread the Cuban revolution to the rest of Latin America, Che Guevara was arrested in Bolivia by the Bolivian army and CIA and faced execution. As Che stood in front of the shaking sergeant, he declared, in a final act of heroic defiance: “Shoot, coward — you’re only going to kill a man,” whereupon the soldier fired, executing Che. Forty years later, the executioner, a reviled old man and now blind, had his sight restored by Cuban doctors paid for by Venezuela, in the radicalized Bolivia of Evo Morales. The incident, one of 1.4 million free eye operations carried out by Cuban doctors in 33 countries across Latin America, underlines not only the humanity of Fidel Castro and Guevara’s legacy but also the transformation of Latin America that has made such extraordinary cooperation possible (Kozloff 2008). The internal attack on poverty, illiteracy, and land concentration by the rich was accompanied by new far-reaching changes in Venezuela’s external relations. Chávez sought to diminish his country’s dependence on the US in his oil policy. The Hydrocarbons Law of 2001 allowed the state to form “mixed companies with national and international capital,” but royalty taxes on oil companies were raised. Chávez’s arrival on the world stage came as a political godsend for Cuba, as it had lost its largest trading partner when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. In 2000, Chávez and Castro signed an agreement that led to Venezuela providing Cuba with cheap oil in return for Castro supplying Venezuela with Cuban medical professionals and educators. Four years later, the plan was expanded, with Venezuela providing 90,000 barrels of oil per day at preferential rates, while Cuba raised the number of medical officials and teachers to 40,000. Chávez also agreed to revamp the almost completed Cienfuegos oil refinery in Cuba, which halted when the USSR collapsed. Chávez’s daily oil exports allowed Castro in May 2005 to double the minimum wage for 1.6 million workers, raise pensions for the elderly, and provide cooking appliances to the poor. Venezuela also benefited from the greatly increased trade in nonoil goods with Cuba, opening a state bank in Cuba and providing the Caribbean nation with $412 million worth of heavily subsidized goods (“Cuba is key to Latin America’s rebirth” 2009). Oil was used by Chávez primarily as a political instrument to strengthen ties with Cuba, but there was also a personal affinity between

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the two leaders. After his failed 1992 coup attempt, Chávez read a number of books about Castro while he spent two years in prison. In the same way, Venezuelan oil was used to build alliances across South America. Chávez hoped South America’s energy sector could be integrated to reduce dependence on the US. Although financial, manpower, and technical problems were becoming acute in Venezuela’s petroleum industry, Chávez made a bold proposal for a $20 billion gas pipeline (GASUR) that would extend 8,000 kilometers from Venezuela to Argentina. Since 2005 Argentina was expected to need to import gas supplies urgently within ten years. GASUR would cross right through the whole length of Brazilian territory, with side spurs to supply cities of Amazonia and northeast Brazil. Brazil’s powerful president, Lula de la Silva, was becoming an ally who supported the idea of a Bolivarian Revolution that would unite South American countries economically and politically. He also supported the GASUR idea, even though it had been long considered impractical and feasibility studies did not exist. The pipeline route would cross many rivers, streams, and swamps and have to deal with seasonal flooding in Amazonia up to 12 meters deep. Finally, the landed cost of GASUR gas in Argentina, including transportation, would be $134 per barrel of oil equivalent, much more than the cost of other oil equivalents. These figures show that the GASUR proposal was quite unsound economically, even if it could be built at a vast cost (Kozloff 2008, p 24). It is interesting to note that Argentina’s President Kirchner dealt with her pressing oil problems dramatically in 2012 by nationalizing the Spanish oil giant in Argentina (REPSOL), in spite of intense opposition from Spain, the US, other countries, and international institutions. Chávez’s proposal for GASUR was based on Venezuela’s 427 billion m3 of proven natural-gas reserves, the largest in South America and ninth largest in the world. However, the seasoned Latin American journalist Norman Gall of the Braudel Institute, São Paulo, noted that 90% of its gas reserves are associated with oil deposits. Of current gas production, 70% has to be reinjected in operations to maintain pressure in producing reservoirs. Venezuela has done little exploration for non-associated gas, and currently is so short of usable gas that oil production in the oil fields around Lake Maracaibo is falling fast because of the lack of available gas to inject into the reservoirs. In addition, PDVSA’s petrochemical affiliate Pequiven announced its own $26 billion expansion plans, even although

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it lacks enough gas “feedstock” for its current production (Gall 2006). Again, Chávez’s plans were clearly overambitious and quite unrealistic. The impact of the decline of Venezuela’s petroleum industry was masked by current high oil prices and the ongoing political gestures of Chávez. Often dressed in a red shirt and Che-style beret as symbols of the revolution, the ubiquitous, heavily jowled Chávez was a “caffeinefueled” human dynamo: revolutionary, continental strategist, statesman, bully, clown, charmer, megalomaniac. He dominated Latin America by seeming to be everywhere and everything. Above all, his popularity and power stemmed from his spectacular social projects for the poor. Instead of gushing into the coffers of the already wealthy, the oil pipelines were picked up and directed into the shantytowns, funding health, education, and cheap food. I well remember the enormous numbers of wretched shacks with tin roofs in the many shantytowns that perched on the steep slopes only 20 minutes from the heart of Caracas. Many were built by expeasant invaders who arrived in the early 1960s, when I first worked in Venezuela. In 2005, they had water, electricity, and not much else. Until more recently, many of these people were morose and despairing, deeply cynical of politicians, and unable to believe their lives could ever change. The Robinson Mission changed all that, however, with free classes for adult illiterates, the arrival of many Cuban doctors to improve health, and the upgrading of most houses. The money made available to some extent made poverty history, but some problems remain, such as old clay sewer pipes that have cracked and become useless, so that effluent flows unchecked down the hillside. More recently, however, many of the inhabitants were swept up in Chávez’s Bolívarian Revolution and became active participants: they petitioned their mayors to repair their schools and sewer pipes. If they were not answered quickly, they descended from their mountainsides to block the motorway. If the revolution was seriously challenged, as in the attempted coup d’état of April 2002, they rushed to support Chávez, for his enemies had become their enemies (Gott 2005). Richard Gott, scholar of revolutionary and left-wing movements in Latin America, including books on Chávez and the Bolívarian Revolution, stated that Chávez “is now perceived in Latin America as the most original political figure to have emerged since Fidel Castro broke on to the scene” over 50 years ago. He regarded Chávez as a man possessing “huge charisma,” with an infinite capacity to relate to the poor populations of the continent. He pointed out that Chávez was a “largely self-educated intellectual.” During his two-year prison term after his failed coup of

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1992, Chávez read widely, including books on Marxism, Napoleon, and the oil industry. The ideology of the Bolívarian Revolution was based on a handful of exemplary figures from the nineteenth century, most notably Simón Bolívar, who liberated most of South America from Spanish rule. Above all, “Chávez offers a cultural as well as a political alternative to the prevailing US-inspired model that dominates Latin America” (Gott 2005). What were the elements of the Bolívarian Revolution? It had close ties with Castro’s Cuba, yet Chávez’s main goal up to 2005 was to curb the excesses of what he called “savage neoliberalism”: he wanted the state to play an enabling role in the economy. Capitalism is alive and well in Venezuela—and secure. Chávez had no desire to crush small businesses, as happened in Cuba. International oil companies were very anxious to provide fresh investment, even after the government increased the royalties they had to pay. Gott also admired the old-fashioned but currently uncommon ability of Chávez “to talk openly about race and class, subjects that have long been taboo, and to discuss them in the context of poverty.” Gott pointed out that in much of Latin America and especially in the Andes, “the long suppressed native peoples have begun to organize and make political demands for the first time since the 18th century, and Chávez is the first president in the continent to have picked up their banner and made it his own” (Gott 2005). In the main, problems for Chávez and his revolution were seen by Gott to be the question of delivery of services and benefits. Opposition forces, especially since 2005, were increasingly formidable and ranged against it. Powerful state institutions no longer existed, since the old political parties had collapsed and the bureaucracy that had survived was “weak, incompetent, and unmotivated.” In this situation, it was likely that Chávez would increasingly look toward the military from which he had sprung to provide “the backbone of his revolutionary reorganisation of the country” (“Welcome to Chávez-land” 2007). Chávez successfully reached out to other leftist leaders in Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Brazil, and supported Evo Morales’s successful revolution in Bolivia and leftist candidates in Peru and Mexico who did not win office. While not completely successful in challenging US hegemony in the region, he considerably diminished its influence. He called the former Mexican president and free-trade supporter Vicente Fox a “puppy dog of the [US] empire.” He certainly made an international

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reputation for himself at the 2005 Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina for his outspoken opposition to US President George W Bush and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. Life seems to have got much more difficult, however, for Chávez after 2005–2006. His popularity declined from its peak in 2006, and although “Hugo the Hurricane” continued to sweep through Venezuela, it was observed that hurricanes “do not last 10 years,” despite his approval ratings still reaching over 50% (Carroll 2009a). In fact, the hurricane lasted almost 14 years, although there were many signs it was greatly slowed down, stuttering in intermittent strong gusts before Chávez’s death. Certainly, much was achieved: by 2008, only 30% of the population was classed as poor (37.9% by IMF/OPEC) compared to 50% in 1998 (67% in 2000 by IMF/OPEC), and while inflation is still the highest in Latin America, it had declined from 35.8% in 1998 to 25.7% in 2008. Venezuela is the most fortunate country in Latin America in its natural resources, but as a petro-state it is subject to booms and busts according to oil-price cycles. Chávez was lucky that prices were rising as he gained power, gushing as much as $400 billion into government coffers over his last decade. Chávez spread wealth by doubling the state payroll and setting up employee-run cooperatives and social missions, but corruption and bureaucratic chaos (ministers were sacked or rotated very frequently) were major problems and infrastructure often atrophied, as well as public services. There was deterioration in roads and hospitals, and the housing shortage worsened. Moreover, the crime rate was extremely high and jails overcrowded and violent. Although the poor have definitely benefited, in spite of the socialist rhetoric much of the bonanza has still ended up in the pockets of the elite. The old elite is still there, and the new “Chavista” ruling class has joined them, which is said to “binge” on record imports of whisky and cars and a rash of cosmetic surgery. Venezuela is said to have the largest number of private jets per head in the world (Forero 2008). Chávez’s popularity had waned by the end of 2007, when the government held a referendum to approve massive changes in the constitution that would allow him to run for office indefinitely, appoint governors to federal districts he would create, and control the purse strings of the country. Immediately, it became clear that this would lead to opposition from some of his former, most influential supporters. Ramón Martínez, governor of the coastal state of Cumana who had originally been a guerrilla and Communist Party member, and a key cog in the Chávez

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machine, said that approval of 69 constitutional changes would turn the country into a dictatorship run at the whim of one man. Chávez had always managed to win previous elections, even against confident and growing opposition that enjoyed US backing, with his whirlwind campaigns, including a barrage of television commercials, political rallies, and charismatic style, giving three or more speeches in a day. There seemed to be few limits to his tactics, for he even campaigned alongside an image of “Christ, the first revolutionary.” A major blow to Chávez occurred when retired general Raúl Baduel turned against him. With two other army officers, Baduel had formed the clandestine antigovernment group with Chávez in the 1980s that eventually propelled Chávez into power. Now, Baduel declared that a new constitution could only be drafted by an elected constituent assembly. Chávez branded such deserters as traitors, despite their impeccable leftist credentials (Forero 2008). For the first time in many years, Chávez suffered defeat in the December 2008 referendum, which put the brakes on his self-styled socialist revolution. He immediately purged his government, making a sweeping cabinet reshuffle and putting the blame on his ministers for failing to win the referendum. Chávez’s fiery rhetoric was also accompanied by some conciliatory actions, as he said he wanted to reach out beyond his core support in the slums: “We are not extremists and we cannot be. We have to look for alliances with the middle class.” However, it was not clear that a sense of a revolving-door government would provide the required stability (Starr 2007). In 2008, one of Chávez’s fiercest critics was his former wife from 1997 to 2004, Marisabel Rodríguez, a former television anchor, who ran for mayor in her home city of Barquisimeto (“Ex-wife rises as voice of opposition” 2008). Chávez, however, plunged ahead in his attempt to build alliances internationally against US dominance in the hemisphere. While the US had pushed ahead with oil ventures in Russia’s southern neighbor of Kazakhstan and NATO had expanded and set up missiles in Poland next to Russia, Russia was only too willing to send a message to Washington: “We can continue to exert influence in your backyard if you continue to exert influence in our backyard.” Chávez was happy to deepen Venezuela’s strategic partnership with Russia. Venezuela’s creaky energy structure was ailing and prone to blackouts. The rich uranium deposits could be put to good use if the country’s first nuclear reactor could be built by Russian technicians. In November 2008, Chávez invited President Medvedev to visit to sign a nuclear cooperation agreement (Carroll

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2008). It was insisted that the project was purely for peaceful purposes. However, it was important for both Moscow and Caracas that the nuclear deal showcased the fact that a partnership now existed that advocated new “poles of power” that checked US hegemony in the region. These developments occurred after the convenient imperialist “hate figure” for Chávez, George W Bush, ended his presidency, but before the new President Obama came to power in January 2009. Chávez also bought $4 billion of Russian arms, including Sukhoi fighters, and spoke of buying Project 636 diesel submarines, Mi-28 combat helicopters, T72 tanks, and air-defense systems. Russia’s president used Venezuela as “a springboard into Latin America,” traveling on to visit Peru, Brazil, and Cuba, the first visit by a Russian leader to Havana in eight years (Carroll 2008). While Latin America was the highest priority in foreign policy for Venezuela, an anti-American alliance was also cultivated with Russia, Belarus, Syria, and Iran. The alliance with Iran was seen to be a direct threat to American interests. By 2009, violence and crime had reached higher levels than ever. Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, dominated by a sprawl of hillside slums, had become the second-most violent city in Latin America after San Salvador. There are 130 murders a year per 100,000 people, and some weekends more than 50 corpses pack the main mortuary. Police across Latin America have a reputation for brutality, reflecting poorly trained, poorly paid forces who have free rein to tackle drug gangs. Venezuela has about 65,000 police and National Guard members. Only 3% of murders are solved, and with drugs and guns being readily available, it can make sense to shoot first. Moreover, the law is equivocal, saying merely that police “cannot kill with impunity.” And in the slums a separate set of rules applies, often allowing officers to do just that. A recent justice minister said that 20% of all crime was committed by police. The lack of confidence of the public in the police was revealed in a poll in which 70% of respondents said that “police and criminals are practically the same.” Between January 2008 and March 2009, police were implicated in 755 “homicide cases,” with some cases including multiple killings. For every officer killed in a supposed shootout, 39 suspects die. Destroying the evidence and intimidating witnesses are said to be routine. There has been a lack of continuity in any policy designed to reform policing, as the justice minister was rotated by Chávez about once a year (“Venezuela struggles to solve its worst crime problems — the police” 2009).

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Kidnapping also increased alarmingly in 2000. While official figures issued in May 2009 indicated 166 abductions over five months, more than one a day, the real figure was estimated to be up to four times higher. The plague afflicts much of Latin America, since criminal gangs have easy access to guns. Women, children, and pensioners, whether wealthy or not, are snatched from shopping malls, and farmers in remote border areas are seized. But even if you are not killed, you have got nothing left after ransoms are paid: your home, your livelihood, everything you have built—gone. In recent years, the number of kidnappings by police has risen (Carroll 2009b).

Macroeconomic Management and Attempting a Transition to Socialism While the fall in oil revenue was expected to have a severe effect on the economy, leading to stagnation and devaluation of the bolivar, in February 2009 Chávez had a stroke of good fortune. In a referendum, 54% of all voters backed a constitutional amendment allowing indefinite reelection (abolishing term limits) for elected officials. The margin over the vote rejecting it, 10%, was almost a million voters. This meant in theory that Chávez could stand for reelection for decades. The result boosted his efforts to transform his country into a socialist state and reinforce his claim to leadership of Latin America’s left-wing governments (Carroll 2009c). Although conditions in general deteriorated for Chávez in 2009, he acted decisively to try to sustain his socialist revolution. In the previous year, he had used military support to take control over a large Mexican cement company. In May 2009, he sent troops to seize boats and facilities owned by oil-service companies as part of a “revolutionary offensive.” More than 300 vessels and 39 ports and docks in Lake Maracaibo, one of South America’s biggest oil reserves, were brought under the control of the state. Two US-owned gas facilities were taken over. This was part of a two-year campaign against foreign and domestic companies, placing 8,000 workers under the umbrella of the state oil company—PDVSA. The timing seemed driven essentially by financial pressures, as the government’s cash cow PDVSA had more recently clashed with oil contractors over fees for extracting Venezuela’s heavy crude. The state company was anxious to cut costs by 40%, as falling oil prices had slashed revenue (Carroll 2009d).

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In July 2009, the government gave a warning that government employees would be suspected of subversion unless they joined proChávez trade unions and community groups. Rafael Ramírez, the oil minister, stated that if they did not join the socialist trade unions they would be sacked. “By now, there should not be one single counterrevolutionary left in the heart of the oil trade unions,” Ramírez said (Carroll 2009e). Clearly, the earlier pragmatic Chávez, praised by Richard Gott for his support for small and medium-sized capitalist enterprises in Venezuela, had now become more radical as he felt more insecure. At the same time, the failure of Chávez’s “back to the land” measures that were implemented five years earlier were becoming apparent. Small farmers resettled on 15-hectare parcels from large expropriated estates still had their land lying fallow six months after they arrived, as there was still no water, electricity, or comforts, let alone technical input. Moreover, the country was more dependent than ever on food imports, which ballooned to $7.5 billion in 2008, a sixfold increase from 1999. The once highly productive large estate, El Charcote, owned by a British company, one of the top ten producers, was idle, the 13,000 cattle gone. The former mainstays of Venezuela’s agriculture—beef, rice, sugar cane, and milk—all declined greatly, and expensive imports caused prices to soar. New farmers were not even given title to the lands they occupied. In some cases, they were grouped into communes and expected to work as a unit, although they had little stake in their plots. A lawyer who used to work for the agriculture ministry said: “That is socialism. It did not work before, and it does not work now” (Forero 2008) (Photo 10.1). Late in 2009, a huge corruption scandal caused the first serious breach between the president and a group of businesses that had grown extremely wealthy with or sanctioned by the government. They were known as the “Boli-bourgeoisie,” a play on the name of Simón Bolívar the liberation hero and the national currency named after him. The scandal shook Venezuela’s financial system and triggered the arrest of tycoons linked to Chávez’s government. Seven banks were closed and eight bankers detained in a widening crackdown. Chávez threatened to nationalize the financial system. Jesse Chacón, a cabinet minister and senior Chávez ally, was toppled. A total of 27 warrants were issued, including nine requests to Interpol for arrests. On his TV show Alo Presidente, Chávez said, “We are demonstrating there are no untouchables here.”

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Photo 10.1 A typical small town in the Venezuelan Andes with a cobbled street

Opponents said Chávez had long ignored corruption within his own ranks and that the arrests were not a cleanup so much as a feud between rival factions. The closed banks comprised 8% of the nation’s deposits. Well-run banks were judged by analysts to be sound and would not be touched by Chávez. Chávez wrote, “These banks should be shown for what they really are … vulgar robbers, thieves in ties, pickpockets, and obstinate kleptomaniacs.” His rhetoric regularly targeted “vampire capitalists” and “squealing oligarchs” who opposed his socialist revolution. Until 2009, less was said about government supporters who grew rich from an oil boom that flooded state coffers with petrodollars. The rise of the new oligarchs was certainly spectacular: one, Ricardo Fernández Barrueco, soon accumulated a billion-dollar fortune by supplying corn and transport services to a state-run network of subsidized food stores. In addition, some members of Chávez’s own family have become very rich people. A year later in 2010, it was found there was something rotten in the state of Venezuela: an unpleasant odor arose from over 2,300 containers of decomposing food in the port of Puerto Carbello and probably in

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others. This food, imported by the government and never distributed, demonstrated the incompetence and chaos of government agencies, coming as it did at a time of growing shortages of basic foodstuffs in state-run grocery chains. The rotting cargoes were found when state intelligence agents were investigating the theft of powdered milk. The government admitted that 30,000 tons of food was rotting in Puerto Cabello. Opposition media put the total at over 75,000 tons, or about a fifth of what PDVAL, the state company responsible, imported in 2009. The company’s former president was arrested for corruption. It was ironic that PDVAL, a subsidiary of the state oil giant, was set up in an indirect recognition that another state-run food chain, Mercal, was failing to do its job. The grandiose objective of PDVAL was to achieve “full food sovereignty” and stamp out what the president described as “hoarding and smuggling” (Carroll 2010). Since 2003, the government has imposed price controls on many foodstuffs. The result, however, has been persistent shortages and soaring inflation: the price of food and drink rose 21% in the first five months of 2010. Elías Jaua, the vice president, tried to blame inflation on speculators linked to political interests who sought destabilization as a campaign strategy ahead of a legislative election in September 2010. It is significant that basic goods were scarcer in Mercat and PDVAL shops than in private supermarkets. Nevertheless, the state stepped up expropriations of farms, food manufacturers, and distributors in an attempt to achieve what it called state “hegemony” over the food supply. In June 2010, it announced the takeover of 18 more food companies accused of flouting regulations. Some 70% of Venezuela’s food was then imported, which was not only expensive but also gave ample opportunities for graft. Polar, a well-run firm generating almost 3% of GDP, remained one of the biggest obstacles to the installation of communism in Venezuela, but as most people were able to see, the government was better at destroying the existing order than at creating a viable alternative (“Food fight: how to destroy an industry” 2010). A takeover of Polar might well have lost Chávez the election. The other side of the fierce internal debate on prices and food shortages is the effect on ordinary people. A man who used to be portrayed as a criminal suspect, class traitor, tool of international capitalism, or foe of Chávez’s socialist revolution, also happened to be a butcher, selling meat from a small ordinary shop in a district of Caracas. This man, Cedeño, who had worked there for 20 years, was seized along with dozens of

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other butchers by military police and held on suspicion of overpricing. He faced up to six years in jail. Economists in general attribute Venezuela’s soaring inflation to loose monetary policy, exchange controls, devaluation, and weak domestic production, a set of interacting factors that did not look likely to change soon. The government got itself into a blind alley with a misguided mix of rampant spending and price and foreign-exchange controls that have led to a growing output gap and soaring inflation. It was clearly unwilling to adopt austerity measures in the runup to the September 2010 congressional elections and was trying to deflect the blame. Cedeño did however have an impeccable answer to the charges unfairly leveled against him: “It is becoming impossible. I am supposed to sell meat at what it costs me to buy it. How do they expect me to cover costs and stay in business?” (Carroll 2010). Jorge Urosa, the Archbishop of Caracas, pointed out that Chávez was installing a “Marxist-communist” regime in Venezuela, only to be abused by the president, who called him a “troglodyte” and accused him of “instilling fear in the people,” yet in June–July 2010 Chávez was openly trying to introduce a novel form of communism. In June, his allies approved the first reading of a draft bill creating the commune, a “socialist local entity … on the basis of which socialist society is to be built,” with legislative, judicial, and executive functions. The communes were meant to be partly self-sufficient, thanks to a “socialist productive model,” outlined in a separate bill, that would replace the existing capitalist economy. In practice, however, most of the resources would be provided by the state, which would also determine which communes could register and impose “development” laws and decrees (“Commune-ism: yet another method to entrench the president’s power” 2010). Observers believed that this project flies in the face of the constitution and public opinion. Chávez had first tried to establish communes through a constitution-reform package in 2007, but this was narrowly rejected in a referendum. By June 2010, Hinterlaces, a polling firm, claimed that only 31% of Venezuelans supported Chávez’s “twenty-first-century socialism,” whereas it claimed 80% preferred private to communal property. While the bill still awaited a second reading to become law, the government said that over 200 communes were already in formation (“The mood of the opposition” 2010).

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The courts had already been taken over by the government, and in July the opposition was provoked into boycotting legislative elections, allowing Chávez to target state and municipal governments for takeover, then the last bulwark against his rule among elected officials. But he appeared to be forcing them to compete for resources with pliable “communes” and thus apparently trying to starve them to death (“Commune-ism: yet another method to entrench the president’s power” 2010). Chávez’s strong support in the hemisphere had also begun to wane, while Obama’s popularity in Latin America had grown in contrast to the unpopularity of former President George W Bush. Under its new president, Dilma Rousseff, Brazil appeared to want to diversify its external relations and lessen the dependence on China by renewing links with the US. On the occasion of electing a new president in Colombia, the US moved to renew its military bases in that American-friendly country. In July 2010, Chávez saw that as provocation and claimed that Colombia might invade Venezuela. Armed forces were placed on alert, and for some weeks a crisis existed between the two countries. However, the new Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, wisely invited Chávez to visit Bogotá for talks and the two leaders appeared on Colombian television, burying their differences and reaffirming their ties of friendship.

Charisma in Decline: Dictatorship and Intimidation After 12 years of tumultuous rule, Chávez was checked when his emboldened opposition made major gains in the September 2010 elections. The Democratic Unity coalition won 65 of 145 seats, well short of a majority, but enough to limit Chávez’s ability to appoint judges and other officials and to push through laws. Chávez’s allies took at least 98 seats, short of the 110 seats needed for the government to rubber-stamp his decisions. In the National Assembly in 2011, the opposition accused Chávez of turning his country into a dictatorship and wrecking its economy. Outside the assembly, demonstrators gathered to condemn the emergency powers granted to the presidency by the previous assembly. Inside, a leading critic of Chávez promised to halt the imposition of what she called “a communism that creates death, sadness, and darkness.” Chávez indicated he proposed to use his emergency powers freely, including the expropriation of private land.

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A dispute broke out with Washington when a candidate for the Venezuelan ambassadorship, Larry Palmer, made comments at a Senate confirmation hearing accusing the Venezuelan government of maintaining ties with Colombian revolutionaries and allowing its armed forces to be infiltrated by the Cuban military. Chávez responded by refusing to accept Palmer’s credentials and offered a list of alternative ambassadors. The State Department had already refused to reinstate the visa of the Venezuelan ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Herrera, and said they would leave the ambassador’s job unfilled rather than withdraw Palmer’s nomination (Whittell 2010). By 2011, the decline of both Chávez’s power and his country’s economy became more apparent. The earlier ambitious plans for Venezuela to join Brazil to build a $15 billion oil refinery in Pernambuco on the coast of northeast Brazil was by mid-2011 only two years from completion, but it had had little input from Venezuela. Venezuela’s economy had begun to founder from 2009, and by 2011 Chávez was no longer able to jet around South America giving fiery and effective antiUS speeches and inaugurating huge schemes funded with petrodollars. Some of Chávez’s biggest populist projects were quietly abandoned or mothballed, including the GASUR pipeline from Venezuela to Argentina, a South American development bank, housing, highways, and a continental investment fund. This diminishing stature reflected the contraction of the Venezuelan economy by 3.3% in 2009 and 1.6% in 2010. In addition to dropping oil production, the state nationalization of farmland and companies contributed to economic decline. Moreover, the president’s image was increasingly sullied by a range of policies that were seen to be antidemocratic, including attacking the media and ruling with decree powers. At the same time, ever-closer ties were forged with iron-fisted rulers, such as Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. Increasingly, factors converged that undercut Chávez’s objective of limiting US influence. By 2011, President Obama had high approval ratings across Latin America, globalization was embraced by most South American leaders, and trade ties with the US were being reforged. Chávez’s close ally in Bolivia, Evo Morales, was facing strong opposition in his attempt to push his Bolívarian Revolution further, and in May 2011 the Peruvian nationalist Ollanta Humala, who had been a close ally of Chávez, said it had been an error to ally himself with the Venezuelan leader in his failed 2006 presidential bid. He transferred his main alliance

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to Brazil and won the 2011 Peruvian election. It was said that the reserved pragmatist Dilma Rousseff was not attracted by the melodramatic style of Chávez, and the latter’s poll rating in Brazil had sunk to only 13% confidence in the Venezuelan leader. As most Latin American countries surged ahead in a period of rapid economic growth, Chávez’s rhetoric was no longer appealing. Brazilian officials said his discourse “was political, ideological, about the liberation of the Americas, of fighting the forces of imperialism … He imagined commanding a revolution in all the Americas against the United States” (Forero 2011). To the consumeroriented masses of Latin America, such ideology was likely to seem very strange and fanciful. The eminent American dissenter and enemy of imperialism Professor Noam Chomsky had long been a strong supporter of Chávez’s socialist revolution and was regarded by Chávez as one of his best friends. However, in 2010, when a female judge, Maria Lourdes Afiuni, decided a banker facing corruption charges should be freed, Chávez, who had taken a close interest in the case, called the judge a criminal and demanded that she be jailed for 30 years. Afiuni, a single mother with cancer, spent over a year in jail and was assaulted by other prisoners before being confined to house arrest while awaiting trial for corruption. The Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy approached Chomsky over Afiuni’s treatment, and he quietly lobbied the Venezuelan government behind the scenes, without success. In an open letter, Chomsky wrote that “Judge Afiuni has suffered enough,” and accused the Venezuelan authorities of “cruelty” toward the jailed judge. Chomsky pointed out that concentration of executive power, unless temporary and for specific circumstances, is an “assault on democracy,” and that Chávez, having been in power for 12 years, appeared to have intimidated the judicial system and adopted enabling powers to circumvent the national assembly: “A trend has developed towards the centralization of power in the executive which I don’t think is a healthy development” (Carroll 2011). The president always claimed that his North American foes’ claim that Venezuela had turned a blind eye to the trafficking of vast quantities of US-bound cocaine through Venezuela was just another Washington plot to discredit him. In April 2012, however, backing for the American version of events was boosted dramatically when “the king of kingpins,” drug lord Walid “The Turk” Makled, a Venezuelan of Syrian descent, went on trial, facing indictment over an alleged $1.4 billion drug empire.

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He asserted that dozens of “top-level” figures around the Chávez government, including ministers, generals, and judges, were on his payroll. He was also charged with money laundering and murder. A part-owner of the Venezuelan airline Aeropostal, Makled was said to have pioneered the use of passenger airlines to export cocaine from Latin America, a bigger, faster shipping method than small private jets and boats. The US announced that Makled, arrested in Colombia, was one of the world’s top-three drug barons. It was believed that he exported up to 10 tons of drugs out of Latin America every month. He said he paid millions of dollars in monthly bribes to Venezuelan civilian and military officials and to a relative of a government minister. The main attention in the case was on those who assisted Makled in his criminal activities. When asked how he had recruited the 40 generals, colonels, and majors allegedly working with him he said, “It was more like they recruited me.” Chávez dismissed Makled’s claims as the words of a condemned man who was also a pawn of the CIA. Nevertheless, the case further besmirched the reputation of Chávez’s regime and justified Washington’s long-held anger at the Venezuelan president’s refusal to cooperate in the war on drugs—a problem that he saw as one created only by wealthy Americans (“Drug kingpin’s revelations embarrass Chávez” 2012).

Chávez: Death and Legacy For some time, observers had noted it was not only the Venezuela economy that was ailing. Chávez too had appeared ill, and in June 2011 he suddenly left for Cuba to undergo surgery. He had two operations— one to remove a baseball-sized cancerous growth—and it appeared he faced a lengthy period of treatment. Supporters feared things might unravel, in spite of many contacts from him via Twitter and phone, but after a few weeks away he suddenly returned just in time for the celebrations of Venezuela’s 200th anniversary of independence from Spain. Supporters were overjoyed that their “comandante” was back. Chávez, 57, was strong enough to wave the flag, sing the national anthem, and speak to the delirious crowd for 35 minutes from the palace balcony. His constant preoccupation was to renew his campaign to win the crucial October 2012 election for a third six-year term. By June 2012, he revealed he had undergone three operations, as well as chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

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In 2011, rumors about Chávez’s illness ran the full gamut, from imminent death to full remission and cure. One Venezuelan doctor shrewdly suggested he would probably last about two years. The race in October 2012 was however thrown wide open, stoking both hope and dread on both sides. The new leader of the opposition was Henrique Capriles, aged 39, a former state governor whose youth and energy contrasted sharply with Chávez’s physical decline. Since the beginning of 2012, speculation had grown about his successor: Nicolás Maduro, a former bus driver, union organizer, and foreign minister; Adam Chávez, Hugo’s older brother, close to Cuba’s leadership and responsible for introducing his brother to radical politics; Elías Jaua, vice-president and formerly a leader at student protests; Tereck el Assami, interior minister; Defense Minister General Carlos Mata Figueroa; or perhaps a woman, such as hydro engineer Jacqueline Faría, head of the district capital government. Chávez was irked that people even discussed the need to consider possible successors. Throughout his term as president, Chávez often appeared to foreign observers to be battling the odds and likely to be beaten by a determined opposition party, yet he was outstandingly successful in rallying support when it was most needed. In the numerous elections and referenda over his last decade, this was often demonstrated, against the odds, when on every occasion save one Chávez soundly beat the opposition party. The election of October 2012 was no different: the external press saw the contest as one between the young, dynamic Capriles, and a perhaps-dying, washed-up Chávez who was still peddling socialist ideas that had run their course. However, in a huge turnout of 80.4% of voters, Chávez won by a resounding margin of over 9% (over 1.2 million votes), guaranteeing him another six-year term, health permitting, that would run from 2013. A month after the election, fears about Chávez reached a new level. He had not been seen in public for nearly three weeks. He rushed to Cuba for treatment on November 27. A fortnight later he canceled what should have been a triumphal reappearance in Caracas. He said the cancer had returned and that he had to return to Havana. More significantly, he named his successor—Foreign Affairs Minister Nicolás Maduro—and appointed him acting president. Over the next three months, there was much sound and fury over Venezuela’s fate and the pending loss of its beloved leader. On March 5, 2013, Chávez was pronounced dead, although in reality he had died a few days earlier: the “hurricane” had

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lasted 14 years. Maduro continued as interim president until a new presidential election could be held on April 14 between Maduro and the opposition’s candidate Henrique Capriles. Such was the solidarity of Chávez’s supporters, united in their grief, that some observers picked that Maduro would easily win the election. Chávez’s political heirs tried to spread a pseudo-religious aura about him, but a hectic opposition campaign to mobilize support for Capriles and Maduro’s lackluster performance led to only a paper-thin victory for Maduro (50.66% of the vote compared to 49.07% for Capriles). Calling himself the “son” of Chávez, Maduro promised to carry on extending the socialist model in this oil-rich nation, raise the minimum wage, and disarm the slums. But now that the larger-than-life Chávez has gone, attempts to build socialism in Venezuela look as if they could falter. Throughout 2013, there were numerous outbursts of anger in the Assembly and on the streets, but by late February 2014 protesters were being gunned down, barricades were in flames, and chaos reigned (Law and Walsh 2014). While this state of affairs arose partly from classic Dutch-disease symptoms of shortage of goods, rampant inflation, and economic mismanagement (Venezuela became the butt of international derision at one point in 2013 when supplies of toilet paper ran out), much of the criticism was directed at Maduro. It seemed possible he might not survive, in which case leadership might pass on to Diosdado Cabello, head of the National Assembly, whose political skills bridge the interests of business and the armed forces, but since the police, army, and drillers are firmly under government control, Maduro may perhaps survive. In this eventuality, the prospect of returning to a mixed-economy model like that of the former AD party of Betancourt might well succeed.

Rapid Urbanization and the Decline of the Peasantry It was becoming clear by the 1970s that “the peasant population of Venezuela was subjected to certain processes which were contributing to its inevitable demise on a national scale” (Margolies 1979, p 7). The processes wrought both qualitative and quantitative changes in the nature of the Venezuelan peasantry and have also led to the partial effacement of regional divergences which had been so vigorous in the past. Venezuela was a predominantly rural nation with an agrarian economy reliant on the continual oscillation of its primary export commodities. By

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the 1930s, the oil export economy had displaced agriculture and rapid urbanization and later industrialization dominated the rural sector. As a result, by the 1970s the rural sector which comprised both the peasant and nonpeasant elements comprised only 20% of the Venezuelan population. Margolies (1979) argues that the peasantry suffered doubly in the transition to urban Venezuela. On the one hand, the peasants have been incorporated into a predominantly urban society through rural and urban migration, but also urbanization has proceeded at a hectic rate with cultural repercussions occurring as the peasants have been brought into the mainstream of Venezuelan society, without necessitating an actual move. The processes at work have “accelerated the urban transformation of the peasantry,” which continued until peasantry as a once significant segment of Venezuela’s population eventually disappeared (Margolies 1979, p 7). Social anthropologists showed little interest in peasantry in Venezuela until about the 1950s and then sporadically afterward. The anthropologist arrived on the scene “to document the eradication of this way of life without having had the opportunity to record its fuller features” (Margolies 1979, p 7). Thereafter it was becoming clear that “the socioeconomic and demographic currents which characterized the country in the 1970s were already achieving a screeching momentum” (Margolies 1979, p 8). However, it is interesting to note that cultural geographer Raymond Crist (1941), the University of Florida, and Henry Stirling and their teams preceded anthropologists in their research work, contributing an early vision of rural Venezuela. Crist traveled the length and breadth of the country over five periods from 1939 to 1973, and captured the rural pessimism which pervaded during the coffee–petroleum transition period. By the early 1940s, he had decided that unless rural conditions were considerably improved, “all measures to prevent the migration to the cities would fail” (Crist 1941, p 40). Henry Stirling carried out an intensive field survey of the three Andean states, Trujillo, Mérida, and Táchira, sponsored by the Consejo de Bienestar Rural. For nearly a century, the Andes had been the primary coffee-producing region in the country, and the emphasis was on the agrarian crisis that faced the region in the years following the final collapse of the coffee export economy. Although the peasantry is almost by definition conservative in its attitudes, Sterling’s team emphasized the structural factors—small farm size, low productivity, and lagging technology—that were negative effects. In

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the 1950s, the city had become a powerful and appealing attraction for the peasant families: the process of rural depopulation had already begun as the provincial cities surged ahead, expanding rapidly. By the late 1950s, more than 50% of the population was classified as urban (Hill et al. 1960). The migration process exhibited a differential rhythm of urbanization region by region in a “concentric circle” pattern of migration in which the migrant moves to successively larger urban centers without necessarily leaving his region of origin. The swidden (shifting cultivation) cultivator was in a precarious position since the large-scale movements meant that a return to the countryside could not be programmed or enforced (Hill et al. 1960, p 154). In the early 1960s, Earl Jones of the University of California led a large team in studying the agrosocial conditions of the town of Bailadores in the Andean state of Mérida. They documented recent agricultural innovations including introducing new crops and a system of sprinkler irrigation. In my second visit to Venezuela in 1979, I noticed that a considerable number of peasants in Mérida state had adopted these new innovations. However, despite the promise that their changes may have had over 25% of persons interviewed by the Earl Jones team expressed dissatisfaction with their present way of life and thought about migrating to the city (Jones et al. 1964, p 156) (Photo 10.2). Margolies (1979) also cites the case of Amuay, a quiet fishing village on a peninsula which was drawn into the orbit of a new industrial zone when a new oil refinery was built there and began operating in the early 1950s. Although the community had the chance of accepting new jobs and other economic benefits, many people began to leave at an alarming rate. Paradoxically, the villagers did not see the new industrial complex as an advantage that offered viable opportunities to them; instead it served to accentuate the disparities between “traditional” and “modern.” Thus, the result was an increase in migration from their countryside home to live in a city (Abouhamad 1966, pp 11–121).

Two Remarkable Leaders Since the overthrow of the dictator Pérez Jiménez in 1958, Venezuela has had two remarkable leaders: Romulo Betancourt and Hugo Chávez. I believe a comparison between the two is instructive. The former was an outstanding leader who restored and largely built democracy in his country, and through the agency of the AD party improved social and

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Photo 10.2 A small peasant holding in the Venezuelan Andes; the main crops are plantains and coffee

economic conditions and extended civil society. He too was well aware of the overpowering hegemony of the US in the hemisphere, and even threatened going to war to defend Venezuelan petroleum rights. Particularly impressive were Betancourt’s projects to expand and improve education and increase the efficiency and quality of the bureaucracy. His great weakness was a lack of understanding of agriculture and the desperate need both to reform and intensify agricultural production in the llanos. The presidents who followed him failed to sustain his valuable gains or Betancourt’s hands-on attention to detail and institution-building, as Venezuela slipped back into inefficiency, waste, and corruption. Chávez proved to be an exceptionally gifted politician, a populist with the gifts of reaching millions of his countrymen and mobilizing them to support his Bolívarian Revolution. Although these qualities were widely known, experienced journalists and outside observers with Venezuelan experience consistently underestimated and misjudged the immense support that Chávez could muster. More recently, Edward Ellis challenged a Venezuelan friend (equivalent perhaps to America’s average

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bloke) as to why so many Venezuelans continued to have faith in Chávez. The reply floored him: “I would not hesitate to sacrifice my life to defend this president. He is the only one who has done anything for the Venezuelan people.” Ellis soberly reflected there was no politician he knew for whom he would give his life. Chávez may have been a populist autocrat, but there was no more authentic representation of Venezuela’s character than him (Ellis 2020). Chávez was also adroit at building an alliance with other Latin American countries to defend their rights against feared US dominance. Relentlessly and successfully, he projected the image of an independent and sovereign Venezuela onto the international stage. He would never sever all relations with the US, however: as much of the Venezuelan heavy black crude oil was difficult to refine, he needed to keep access open to some of the huge US refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. Chávez deserves credit for the great success of some of his missions, such as the attempts to eliminate poverty and illiteracy and to improve housing. However, it should be noted that a major role was played by Cuban teachers and doctors who volunteered to assist Venezuela, many of whom stayed for over two years, separated from their wives and children. Although Chávez reduced poverty greatly, he appeared to have dealt with the symptoms rather than the real causes. Many of the jobs created may not in the longer term turn out to be real jobs, and gifts of food do not generate an increase in food production. There are also fundamental structural problems with the Venezuelan economy, many associated with the petrolification of its major sectors, which can lead to Dutch-disease effects crowding out other potentially important industries. It would have been valuable if Chávez could have found able economists who could work out how to deal with this and other structural macro-problems. This weakness is evident in many areas, especially that of agrarian reform. Chávez seemed to believe that the expropriation of land from large estates and their distribution to the poor campesinos was all that was necessary. Indeed, in most areas he believed that a problem could be solved by passing a law and assigning a managerial role to a government department. When desired changes did not happen, he would sack the minister and appoint a new one. Not only were ministers not given sufficient time, he never attended to the details and practicalities of their tasks. This is shown dramatically in his biggest failure of all: not looking after “the goose that lays the golden egg”—the petroleum industry. It was a fateful mistake to permanently dismiss key technical PDVSA staff and to forbid

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other oil companies in Venezuela from rehiring them after the serious petroleum strike of 2002–2003: their technical knowledge was vital to maintaining the oil wells in a good state. As these crucial maintenance procedures were not carried out, oil output had fallen by as much as 30% by 2011, even although total reserves were still vast. The folly of the Chávez government in allowing the rundown of the country’s greatest resource was finally revealed in the huge explosion and fire at Venezuela’s biggest oil refinery at Amuay, west of Lake Maracaibo, on August 26, 2012. In sum, 39 people were killed and over 80 injured. Although an enquiry has been held, it seems that such a deadly disaster was the logical and inevitable outcome of neglect and mismanagement over a decade (“Dozens killed in explosion at great oil refinery” 2012). Perhaps the final word should go to Gabriel García Márquez, the great Colombian novelist and Nobel Prize winner, who found himself on a flight returning to Caracas sitting next to Chávez. They had a long, wideranging conversation. On arrival, wrote Márquez, “I watched him walk away, surrounded by his guards with all their military decorations. I had the odd feeling that I had traveled and talked with two quite separate men. One was a man to whom obstinate good fortune had given the opportunity to save his country; the other was an illusionist who could well go down in history as yet another despot” (“The president in his labyrinth: on the flight to Venezuela” 2000).

References Abouhamad J. Amuay: Un Pueblo Olvidado (pp 11–121). Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela; 1966. Carroll R. Hurricane swirls round Chávez as oil price clouds anniversary. February 6, 2009a. Guardian Weekly. Carroll R. Kidnap fears grow in Venezuela. May 22, 2009b. Guardian Weekly. Carroll R. Chávez wins no-limit mandate. February 20, 2009c. Guardian Weekly. Carroll R. Chávez seizes docks and boats of oil firms. May 15, 2009d. Guardian Weekly. Carroll R. Join Chávez or face the sack. July 24, 2009e. Guardian Weekly. Carroll R. Butchers on the hook as Chávez caps prices in war on thieving food sellers. July 9, 2010. Guardian Weekly. Carroll R. Chomsky censures Chávez on jailed judge. July 3, 2011. Guardian Weekly. Carroll R, Harding L. Russia makes nuclear deal with Chávez. November 28, 2008. Guardian Weekly.

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Chávez’s mission to get out the vote. July 10, 2004. Economist. Chávez launches farm offensive. January 21, 2005. Le Monde. Commune-ism: yet another method to entrench the president’s power. July 17, 2010. Economist. Crist RE. Changing Patterns of Land Use in the Valencia Lake Basin of Venezuela. New York: American Geographical Society; 1941. Dozens killed in explosion at great oil refinery. August 27, 2012. Dominion Post, Wellington. Drug kingpin’s revelations embarrass Chávez. April 30, 2012. Dominion Post, Wellington. Ellis E. Hugo Chávez still has a hold on Venezuela’s people - he’s one of them. October 8, 2020. Guardian Weekly. Ex-wife rises as voice of opposition. November 19, 2008. Dominion Post, Wellington. Food fight: how to destroy an industry. June 12, 2010. Economist. Forero J. Former allies turn against Chávez. June 11, 2008. Washington Post. Forero J. Chávez finds influence waning as oil dollars and splashy schemes run dry. May 23, 2011. Guardian Weekly. Gott R. Chávez shows how to lead. June 3, 2005. Guardian Weekly. Hill GW, Silva JA, de Hill RO. La Vida Rural en Venezuela. Caracas: Tip. Vargas; 1960. Jones E, Ocando L, Guevara J. Bailadores: An Agro-Social Study of a Rural Venezuelan Region. Caracas: Instituto Caribe de Antropologia; 1964. Kozloff N. Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left. New York: Palgrave Macmillan; 2008. Law P, Walsh J. Venezuela protests: demonstrators tell us why they’re taking part. June 8, 2014. Guardian Weekly. Margolies L. The Venezuelan Peasant in Country and City. Vol 1. Caracas: Ediciones Venezolanas de Antropología; 1979. Gall N. Oil and disorder in Venezuela. O Estado De S. Paulo. February 5, 2006. Internacional. Starr A. Populism built on petro-dollars. September 21, 2007. Guardian Weekly. “The mood of the opposition”, number 724, May, 2010. Comunos sin Comunidad. The president in his labyrinth: on the flight to Venezuela. August 2000. Le Monde Diplomatique. The seeds of Latin America’s rebirth were sown in Cuba. January 28, 2009. Guardian Weekly. Venezuela struggles to solve its worst crime problems—the police. September 11, 2009. Guardian Weekly. Welcome to Chávez-land. January 26, 2007. Guardian Weekly. Whittell G. Opposition grows after 12 years of Chávez’s grip. October 1, 2010. Guardian Weekly.

CHAPTER 11

Venezuela: Chaos and Decline

The Ellner Thesis In February 2014, violent antigovernment protests in Venezuela once again raised the issue of the pace of change into the larger debate over socialist transformation. Radical Chavistas representing the zeal of the rank and file called for a deepening of the “revolutionary process,” while on the other hand moderate Chavistas favored concessions to avoid a further escalation of violence. The same dilemma confronted the socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile in the early 1970s, but under different political circumstances. Unlike in Chile, Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro have—at least apparently—won nearly all national elections over a period of 15 years by absolute majorities. Moreover, Chavistas since the early years have maintained firm control of the two most important institutions in the country: the armed forces and the state oil company—the PDVSA. The sheer force of the opposition’s disruptive protest in February reinvigorated the Chavista rank and file. With his government’s political survival threatened, Maduro spoke on successive days in late February at mass rallies of women, oil workers, motorcyclists, telephone workers, and finally peasants and indigenous people. At each event, social movement representatives called for the “deepening of the revolutionary process,” “radicalization,” and people power. Maduro, for his part, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Watters, Rural Latin America in Transition, Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65033-9_11

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outlined popular measures and also at times threatened the elite with radicalization, a combination of both “carrot and stick” approaches that Chávez had used successfully in the past. Immediately after each triumph, the Chávez government had taken advantage of the situation to boost its political capital by announcing bold initiatives. After his victory in the recall referendum election of 2004, Chávez defined himself as a socialist and expropriated several abandoned factories. After he won 63% of the vote in the 2006 election, he nationalized strategic industries. Maduro copied this policy in the December 2013 municipal elections, following his master in taking calculated risks. It appears that opinion is divided on whether his moves have advanced the revolutionary process or in fact were a step backward. He did however try to address the new problems that have appeared: acute shortages of basic commodities, price increases far above those set by the government, a 56% inflation rate (nearly triple that of the previous year), widespread currency speculation, and the refusal of the opposition to recognize the government’s legitimacy. Shortly after Chávez’s death was announced in March 2013, Maduro was elected president with an unexpectedly narrow majority of only 1.7%. In interpreting the result, the opposition and local media stressed that Maduro failed to live up to Chávez’s leadership level. Le Monde Diplomatique published a story on disillusioned Chavistas, quoting one who was still loyal to the government, but said “we don’t want a president that is a joke” (“The president in his labyrinth: on the flight to Venezuela” 2000). By November however, Maduro’s popularity was restored when he declared war on price speculation. With a well-publicized campaign, he and the government authorities inspected large commercial firms, documenting the grotesque prices of household appliances and other products imported with preferential dollars: dollars sold by the government to merchants at an artificially low price in Venezuelan bolivars. The National Guard occupied the stores at the same time the prices were slashed, and in several cases the government detained and initiated judicial proceedings against store owners. This direct and decisive approach was popular with voters in December: The public opinion from polling firm Hinterlaces reported that 70% of Venezuelans approved of the economic offensive and 62% supported measures to limit profits. After the December election, Maduro announced three strategies: his willingness to meet with opposition leaders and businesspeople to find ways to reduce tension and solve specific problems; stringent measures

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against speculators, hoarders, and contrabandists; to “rationalize” government controls to narrow the disparity between regulated prices and the market value of goods and services. He wisely followed these three strategies with specific action taken at the local level, including personal security, housing construction, and health measures. In late January, the Law for the Control of Fair Costs, Prices, and Profits was passed, which established jail sentences of up to 14 years for contrabandista, 12 years for those accused of hoarding, and eight to ten years for merchants who sold at above regulated prices. A federal office was established to monitor prices and ensure profits did not exceed about 30% of investment (“The president in his labyrinth: on the flight to Venezuela” 2000). Finally, in a move designed to put the economy in a more stable state, Maduro dramatically devalued the bolivar from 6.3 to 11.3 to the dollar for imports of inessential goods and tourists traveling abroad. In the hope of introducing flexibility into the economy, Maduro also left open the possibility that the exchange rate could fluctuate on a regular basis, as could regulated prices for basic commodities. Minister of Energy and Oil Rafael Ramirez also raised the idea of increasing petrol prices, the cheapest in the world, to cover production costs. In Maduro’s defense, all these measures appear at face value to be sound and democratic (including talks with the opposition), attempting to rectify the worsening economic conditions and involving the main opposition party. Radical Chavistas and many rank-and-file members felt that Maduro’s overtures to the opposition implied a softening of government positions and perhaps even a concession to powerful interests. The radical former guerrilla Toby Valderrama argued that the only alternative to capitulation to economic elites was the appropriation of their companies, particularly those that convert food into a “commodity by illegally jacking up prices to maximise profit” (“The president in his labyrinth: on the flight to Venezuela” 2000, p 6). Valderrama was vindicated in his judgment, as government officials and then Maduro himself in 2013 revealed that in 2012, bogus companies had received preferential dollars, allegedly to pay for imports of up to $20 billion in value. Valderrama called for appropriations and jailing, but Maduro placed part of the blame on government functionaries working with commercial interests. Moreover, although Planning Minister Jorge Giordani first leveled the charges in March 2013, the public rip-off was confirmed soon after by the head of the central bank. It was only in

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December that Maduro named a presidential commission to investigate the case. While announcing the shocking fact that 1,245 companies no longer qualified for preferential dollars, due to falsification of information, the government failed to reveal their names or take them to court. Finally, in early March 2013 Vice-President Jorge Arreaza announced that the government would shortly publish the names of the spurious companies that received preferential dollars. Ellner states that it is “puzzling that the Maduro government formulated the accusations if it lacked the willpower to proceed vigorously against powerful economic interests and state bureaucrats” (“The president in his labyrinth: on the flight to Venezuela” 2000, p 7). While the radicals have not given the Maduro presidency sufficient credit for facing up to corrupt functionaries and what it calls the “parasitic bourgeoisie,” they have rightly pointed out shortcomings in the government’s campaigns. The effort has not been consistent: names of those involved in illegal and corrupt dealings have not always been revealed, local government and community groups have not played a central role in identifying targets, and the government has often failed to follow up in its threats of judicial proceedings. The government’s strategy of an opening toward business and political adversaries met with mixed reactions on the left and in the labor movement. Apprehension characterized the reaction of both the radical UNETE faction and to a lesser extent the more moderate Bolivarian Socialist Workers Control. The UNETE national coordinator Servando Carbone told Ellner he feared negotiations might be a prelude to the abandonment of key labor gains, especially the Labour Law of Provision of 2012 that outlawed outsourcing within three years of its passage. The government was praised for incorporating large numbers of contractorfirm workers into the payrolls of state industrial companies, but Carbone told Ellner that it was appropriate to hire employees in the public administration on a contractual basis. Carbone stressed that “implicit in all negotiations is the willingness to grant concessions; this is what may be in store for the ban on the … practice of outsourcing” (“The president in his labyrinth: on the flight to Venezuela” 2000, p 8). The meeting between Maduro and opposition governors and mayors in December 2013 was an implicit negotiation of the president’s legitimacy by leaders who had refused to accept the results of the April 2013 elections. It is interesting to note that various opposition politicians, including both the executive secretary of the Movement Towards

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Socialization (MAS) and the top business and right-wing group Fedecámaras, which had led the coup against Chávez in 2002, participated in the National Peace Conference organized by Maduro in late February. Their call for an end to political violence represented a blow to the opposition alliance, the MUD, which boycotted the meeting. Indeed, the move to negotiate with anti-Chavista political leaders was smart: Maduro sensed a rift within the MUD, since it now included two separate factions: the “fascist faction” that organized the February demonstration, and the opposing democratic faction, which focuses on specific issues, rather than regime change. This notion of a rift in the MUD was backed up by the view of the former vice-president and José Vicente Rangel, who stated that “support for dialogue is producing a pressure-cooker effect on the MUD: the alliances’ days are numbered” (“The president in his labyrinth: on the flight to Venezuela” 2000, p 8). Another interpretation of the evolving situation was presented by the significant government leader, National Assembly (NA) Vice-President Diosdado Cabello, who believed the MUD standard-bearer Henrique Capriles and others were playing the role of “good cop,” although they were also working hand in glove with the “bad cops”—the so-called fascists. Even peaceful protests that were supported by the entire opposition involved daily disruption of traffic that was designed to paralyze urban transport. I recall that when I visited Caracas in 1974 to attend a conference when there were no street protests, I was stuck in a taxi that crawled very slowly in a traffic jam and was half an hour late in reaching my destination. Any protest demonstration would clearly greatly aggravate the crush in the already-overcrowded city streets. Moreover, Capriles, governor of the state of Miranda, along with other opposition governors and mayors considered democrats, refrained from containing the violence in other areas of jurisdiction. As such, they too bear some responsibility for the violence and carnage through their conspiratorial plans.

The López Maya Thesis The thesis put forward by Dr Margarita López Maya, a historian and social scientist at the Centre for Development Studies at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, overlaps somewhat with that of Ellner, but presents a distinctly different analysis of the great socioeconomic and political crisis that has engulfed Venezuela since the death of President Hugo Chávez. She notes that in the two years of Chávez’s illness leading up to his death

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on March 5, 2013, various imbalances that had existed since the beginning of his term in 1999 deepened. His death left “an immense political vacuum,” since political power and decision-making were concentrated in the presidency. Chávez had announced on December 8, 2012, before departing for his last unsuccessful surgery in Havana, that his successor would be Vice-President and Chancellor Nicolás Maduro. Following the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (CRBV), upon his death presidential elections were immediately convened to be held on April 14. When the National Electoral Council published the results, it showed only a meager 1.7% advantage for Maduro over Henrique Capriles Radonski of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) (“The president in his labyrinth: on the flight to Venezuela” 2000). Six months earlier, Chávez had won the election by 11%. This pronounced weakening of power placed Maduro and the ruling party in a difficult position politically compared to the opposition. In the ensuing days, the president, his government, and his party chose to polarize the discourse further, denouncing a potential coup d’état from the extreme right, whose head would be Capriles Radonski. The government showed signs of condoning violence against opposition leaders and supporters, deepening the political crisis even more.

The Political Context: The Emergence of Chavista Populism López Maya (2014) argues that the political crisis in Venezuela is a direct result of the emergence of extensive political imbalances. These follow directly from the dismantling of the liberal democratic institutions established in the CRVB, only to be replaced by a new state of direct democracy, led from above during the second term of President Chávez (2007–2013). The new emerging regime has, she argues, characteristics of authoritarian populism. The CRBV state has been replaced by an illiberal “communal state.” López Maya uses the definition of populism of Ernesto Laclau as a universal form of doing politics characterized by an aggressive and polarizing political discourse that divides society into “the people” (the good, the poor, the powerless) and “the oligarchy” (the bad, the elite, the powerful). The deepening of anomie throughout Venezuelan society was starkly illustrated by the continuous growth of social violence—murders,

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robberies, and kidnappings—in addition to the corruption and penetration of organized crime into state organizations. As already mentioned in Chapter 7, in 2013 these indications were among the highest not only in Latin America but also in the world. In Chávez’s first term in 2000, participatory organizations were motivated by liberal, democratic ideas that played a key part in the emergence of a popular civil society. These organizations, such as the water roundtables or the self-managed community organizations, were autonomous and designed to comanage public services with local authorities. In his second term, however, Chávez launched the community councils with a different and nonautonomous perspective. By 2012, there were already over 40,000 of these councils, which were “increasingly converted into a network of patronage tied to the leader and led from above.” In return for receiving resources for their community projects, they were required to show political loyalty to Chávez, his party, and his socialist proposal. This is typical of classical patronage by traditional caudillo leaders in Latin America. Another mechanism of institutional destruction was the more than 30 “social missions” created and controlled by Chávez since 2003, which operated in parallel with state social institutions. They strongly affected various sectors of the population, including the poor, but weakened the potential for full empowerment if they were popular social organizations, thus reinforcing the paternalistic and patronage-like culture of traditional times.

Socialism of the Twenty-First Century: The Emergence of the Communal State From the beginning of his second term, Chávez was determined to impose his project “socialism of the twenty-first century” which required the institutionalization of new relationships between society and the state and creation of a “communal state.” By the end of 2010, a few months before Chávez’s illness was announced, the laws that laid the foundations for the new communal state were in place, and this new state began to emerge parallel to the one established by the CRBV. This new state is not based on a liberal conceptual framework, including the individual political subject’s right to vote and other civil and political rights. It is quite clear that the new framework of socialist laws and a communal state has very definitely distanced Venezuela from Western

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representative democracies. Chávez’s new regime gave priority to councilbased direct democracy, lessened the effect of universal suffrage and the autonomy or interdependence of public institutions, and restricted such principles as pluralism and rotation of public officers. The control of resources, strategic decisions, and the appointment of subnational authorities were assigned to the executive branch. All of these developments and innovations contradict the CRBV, which conceived a political regime combining representative and participatory democracy. The rejection in 2007 of the reform proposals by popular vote made it clear that there were reasonable doubts about the legitimacy of the whole subsequent legal process, in spite of the interpretation of the highest law court.

The Economic Model: Rentier Socialism The communal state exists within or alongside an economic model that has not changed much from the Venezuelan model of the twentieth century. Indeed, it appears now to be worse. In spite of Chávez’s boastful rhetoric of “the ironclad economy in the face of capitalism,” Venezuela has lacked an economic vision that could either transcend or surpass the “rentier oil model” that has shaped the Venezuelan economy since the 1920s. This rentier model is essentially funded by the international oil market and benefited up to 2012 from rising oil prices that were then ten times higher than when Chávez began his first term, with average prices increasing from $10.57 per barrel in 1998 to $103.44 per barrel in 2012. The rentier oil model is different from other modern economic models, because the economic surplus does not derive primarily from an internal productive process taxed by the state. The “petro-state” is financed by significant income that is extracted from the external market. This leads to the tendency of elites and government bureaucracies to become autonomous from society and thus escaping from citizen control. This system favors inefficiency, corruption, and often the implementation of ambitious, grandiose projects and investments. Rentier socialism is similar to state capitalism, which accelerated during the first presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez in the 1970s. Oil prices skyrocketed, but fell drastically in the 1980s, leaving Venezuela indebted and impoverished. As in the situation in 2018, the petro-state recentralized, confiscated land, canceled debts, naturalized companies, and heavily regulated the economy. The goal then was to become part of the “First

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World.” Under the flagship of socialism, some features of the old model were now increased—more state confiscation of rural lands, increase in the number of nationalized companies, and stricter state control—which increasingly hampered the production process. Such steps led to economic stagnation. In fact, there was a 50% drop in production in the manufacturing sector from levels before Chávez was in office. Apart from a small number of exceptions, there has also been a drop in agricultural production and agribusinesses. In spite of important investments made by the government in the countryside, including debt relief and equipment purchases in 2014, the country imported about 65% of its food products and manufactured goods. These unfavorable trends led to a flight of rural population to the cities. As much as $95.5 of every $100 that entered the country came from the sale of hydrocarbons (Photo 11.1). A feature of rentier socialism is that it weakens private property in favor of social property, as specified in the Plan of Socialist Transition 2007–2014. The intention of this plan was that the communes would be the socialist spaces in which the “new man” would be born with

Photo 11.1 Small agricultural plots (minifundia) in the Andes on very steep land

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a new self-managing and self-sustaining economy. However, the “units of endogenous development” which include the Zamoran estates, rural cooperatives, communal councils, and “social production companies” operate under a system of collective property with antihierarchical principles that do not distinguish between manual and intellectual labor and claim they do not pursue profits. As a result, “they languish without tangible results and are sustained by the continual financial support of the petro-state” (López Maya 2014). López Maya (2014) says, “Official economists agree that the management of ‘socialist’ companies like cooperatives, social production companies, etc., has been an unfortunate failure. Nevertheless, we weren’t able to gain access to recent figures.” As a result of these trends, economic imbalance grew during the final years of Chávez’s second term. The increasing failure of many sectors of the economy was inexorable, leading to growth in fiscal spending in 2011 and 2012 in an attempt to respond to growing social demands in the middle of an election campaign that Chávez ran in a seriously deteriorated state of health. Unofficial figures suggest that under this government spending reached 16% of GDP in 2012 and was financed through considerable indebtedness to the banking sector, mostly national but also international. Inflation continued to grow over the period 2004–2014, averaging 20% annually, and imports continued to grow, which indicated the failure of the agricultural sector. The government tried to ward off news of these trends that would endanger its electoral victories. On October 7, 2012, Chávez won his last election, but by February 2013 Vice-President Maduro was forced to devalue the bolivar by 46.8%, further lowering wages and salaries already hurt by the previous inflation. As López Maya says, “The history of the petro-state repeats itself: although the price of oil hovered around $100 per barrel, petrodollars are insufficient to cover the expenses of the ‘magical state’ and indeed its appetite was voracious and unrelenting.” The very important state oil company, PDVSA, appeared unstable as well. It had been saddled with unrelated projects to fulfill the socialist agenda. For example, PDVSA was in charge of educational social missions, food distribution, infrastructure, and housing construction— roles that defy logic for an oil company. It had also financed political advertising for the president and supported international allies. Such diversification of functions and expenses had damaged its production and managerial competence. PDVSA had to postpone important investments

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in technological upgrading, equipment replacement, and maintenance issues. After the massive layoff of competent staff in the attempted 2003 coup against Chávez, the company had not properly trained the new manager and technicians to take over to enable it to recuperate fully. Some of these factors explain why Venezuelan oil production did not increase in capacity in the period up to 2014. The very low cost of petrol (only $10.08 per gallon) greatly increased total demand, which contributed to the decrease in exportable volume. Frequent accidents in the refineries also affected gas exports and undermined confidence in the stability of the Venezuelan oil industry. Increasingly, the industry had to buy in the external market to fulfill its commitments to its clients. All these factors contributed to an already-explosive political situation.

The Socioeconomic Situation Venezuelan society changed considerably in the period 2000–2014. One of the main priorities of the Chávez government was the fight against poverty and exclusion and the achievement of greater equality and social justice. There is no doubt that in these areas, the Chávez government was strikingly successful in making significant gains, and for these achievements it deserves recognition. They also of course contributed greatly to his popularity, explaining his electoral victories. From 2003, over 30 “social missions” were established to solve pressing problems. In contrast to previous social policies, those of the Chávez era were (in time-honored populist fashion) directly linked to the president, who allocated the resources outside of national budget with special funds created from extra revenue from the oil business or directly from revenue of the PDVSA. Initially, the missions sought to overcome isolated and short-term problems, such as illiteracy, completing primary school for adults, food security, increasing food prices, and free preventive and primary medicine care in poor, working-class neighborhoods. As these missions gave Chávez a positive political yield, he made them a central part of his social policies and of the socialist proposal for his second term. The petro-state was able to boost its resources from the oil boom, enabling the launch of a range of missions generally linked to Chávez’s electoral campaigns. In noncampaign periods, the missions generally languished, and even the most successful ones weakened and had to be relaunched time and time again.

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According to official figures on poverty, critical poverty among Venezuelans had been reduced to half what they were in 1998 (families in poverty in 2011 made up 27.1% of the total). The Gini coefficient, used to measure the inequality gap between rich and poor, showed that for the first time in decades, Venezuela was one of the least unequal societies on the continent. The number of elderly pensioners doubled, as enrolment in primary schools and university education almost tripled. With help provided by social organizations and community councils, many formerly poor communities received resources that improved the quality of their lives. Various scholarships and subsidies were given out, covering basic needs. Formal public employment also increased and the length of the workday reduced by law. Clear gains have been made in labor rights for domestic workers, and a decree has guaranteed job security since 2012. Of course, the promotion and implementation of all these policies has always been attributed to President Chávez personally. In spite of these improvements and advances, severe economic imbalances undermined the achievement of permanent gains. Private employment was declining and new burdensome public positions established to compensate for the loss. It is thought the number of public employees doubled, and those within PDVSA tripled. The informal sector declined, but still employed over 40% of the economically active population. Despite annual salary increases, the high inflation and de facto devaluation in 2013 worsened income levels. The government refused to let external bodies evaluate the quality of education, so it is difficult to judge its quality, although it is known that there was strong polarization and ideological biases in public schools. All these issues and problems and other social factors provoked growing street protests that created a permanent state of unrest and growing chaos. This catalogue of woes is so extensive that it is abundantly clear that government management did not led to stable development of institutions and routines. Indeed, the “revolutionary” atmosphere did not encourage careful and logical planning, but on the contrary introduced a logic of improvisation, provisional measures, and emergency operations that in fact increased inefficiency and instability. Moreover, some institutions, such as various missions, operated in parallel fashion to other state institutions that had the same functions. This increased fiscal expenses, creates overlaps, and negatively affects resource management. The electricity shortage, especially in the center of the country, was among the worst of these service crises. Cities experienced constant and

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sometimes-prolonged blackouts, while infrastructure and public transport continued to deteriorate. There were also intermittent food shortages and higher food prices, partly due to government delays in granting currency exchange to importers. A growing black-market exchange for dollars emerged when the official rate was seven times lower than the market rate. The constantly increasing social-violence indicators already referred to in Chapter 7 were also a matter of grave concern. Although violence began to rise at least a decade before the Chávez era, it increased so much that the country, and especially Caracas, was called one of the most dangerous places in Latin America. In 2012, statistics showed there was an average of 54 homicides for every 100,000 inhabitants, but according to Programa Venezolano de Educación-Acción en Derechos Humanos, the rate was 78 per 100,000 inhabitants. One in every four crimes was attributed to the brutal security forces. The nongovernmental organization (NGO) Venezuelan Prison Watch reported a horrific picture of the penitentiary crisis. On average, about 350 prisoners die each year (in 2012, 591 died). Venezuela’s prison system is reported to become one of the world’s worst and most violent. Prior to the death of Chávez, for 21 months Venezuelans lived through a complicated and bizarre situation in which the severity of his illness was hidden from the public. The public media manipulated information to create the illusion that Chávez was fully capable of fulfilling the duties of the presidency, even though he was absent from the country for extended periods and clearly unable to rule. This continued until the day he died. There was no declaration of an appropriate temporary executive, as required by the CRBV, during his absence. As a result, an atmosphere of confusion, rumors, and tensions began to grow, affecting many Venezuelans. However, the NA is used to legitimate violence and the abuse of power by government lawmakers. In the April 15 session of the NA, its president, Diosdado Cabello, stopped the opposition exercising the right to free speech and relieved them of their managerial posts in parliamentary commissions. Their salaries too were suspended, as the argument was that since they did not recognize Maduro as president, they should not have rights as representatives. The session turned violent, and at least two opposition representatives were wounded by blows. Even worse violence occurred on April 30, when there was an assault on ten opposition representatives, with two receiving fractures. Minister Iris Varela justified the

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“ass-beatings,” and Maduro’s chancellor, Jaua, claimed that the violence was initiated by the opposition themselves. The opposition, headed by Capriles, hardened their approach, challenging the elections and refusing to recognize Maduro as president-elect. This political impasse was overcome a month later when legislators agreed to respect the democratic institutional framework. But the tension returns every time the government uses its simple majority to impose agendas and approve laws without dialogue. In October, Maduro appeared in the NA in order to request an Enabling Act as part of a policy of combating corruption. He accused two members of the Primero Justicia party of being corrupt. The two protested their innocence, but their right to speak was suspended for a month. Government strategy includes discrediting, persecution, and in some cases the jailing of high-ranking opposition politicians, even Capriles Radonski, leaders of the Voluntad Popular Party, such as Leopoldo López and Antonio Rivers, who was jailed, being blamed for the outbreaks of violence following April 14. Open proceedings are used to employ scare tactics and threats. Since the ruling party did not win enough seats in the 2010 elections to secure the qualification of (two-thirds or three-fifths) majority in the NA, they have been opening investigations against opposition representatives to weaken and discredit them to decrease the number of seats held by that bloc. They have had some success. Charges of corruption before the attorney-general’s office or the courts are the tactic most commonly used against opposition leaders: Capris, the governor of Mirando, his secretary, Oscar López, Henri Falcon from Lara, and Liborio Guarulla from Amazonas all faced lawsuits and open investigations. As part of a strategy of weakening and delegitimizing opposition politicians, Maduro has copied Chávez, naming PSUV candidates who have been defeated, granting them resources to compete with elected authorities. During the Chávez era, the government chipped away at freedom of expression and curtailed access to truthful, timely, and diverse sources of information. Authoritarianism continued under Maduro. Private media outlets whose editors were strongly critical of the government were purchased, thus influencing editorial direction. For example, the television channel Globovisión was bought by the government in May 2013. Maduro brought lawsuits in the attorney-general’s office against even moderate daily newspapers because the headlines displeased him. The

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attorney-general’s office has been diligent: pleasing the government with scare tactics and calling directors and journalists as witnesses. The growth of authoritarianism is indeed a sinister and alarming trend in Venezuela, but two other strategies portray growing illegality carried out by the national government: nepotism and militarization of the government. The current government has started a trend of appointing friends and family members to important public positions with no regard to their suitability to fill them. Relatives of Chávez and high-ranking officials, such as Cilia Flores and Diosdado Cabello, came to hold positions directed by Cabello. Because of the lack of institutional checks and balances over state powers, this trend has become more frequent. The vice-president of the republic was Chávez’s son-in-law, his daughter directs the Milagro Mìssion. The national treasury was led by Cilia Flora’s cousin, the chief of the Department of Special Inspectors of the Presidency was Maduro’s son (only 23 years old), while the head judge of the judiciary was Cilia Flora’s son, aged 27. A serious failure of governance is increasingly apparent and fueling a growing militarization of public management. Chávez had plans to create a “Political Command of the Revolution,” but Maduro has transformed it into essentially a military organization, rather than a civic one. In September 2013, Maduro blamed the “fascist” right for causing national sabotage that he claimed was responsible for inflation and food shortages. He created a “Comptroller of the Economy” and appointed as its head Major-General Herbert García Plaza, who returned to active duty to take on this new role. Maduro’s diagnosis of the situation is that an out-of-control war is being waged by the international Right, the empire, and fascism, which requires a further militarization of the government and society. Although a military component is not included in the CRVB, he suggested a reactivation of enlistment in the Bolívarian militia. He also suggested the goal of bringing the current number of militiamen—400,000—to 1 million. Previously, militiamen had been used for surveillance purposes in ministries, hospitals, and institutes. The general in charge then used the militiamen (and women) at weekends to reduce the problem of excessive labor costs and conflicts due to rapidly rising inflation. Another sign of militarization is the Homeland Security Plan launched by Maduro to combat crime. This involves the militarization of publicsafety police forces, now placed under the authority of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces and the militias. Another example is the creation

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by decree of the Strategic Centre for the Safety and Protection of the Homeland. Its role is to regulate access to public information and to permit the state to call on citizens to provide information that it requires, without any judicial guarantees. These measures are typical examples of Latin American proclivities to frequently set up such dubious costly institutions that create more bureaucracy and often achieve few worthwhile outcomes. Such developments reflect a growing military influence in government and a tendency increasingly to use authoritarian methods to confront essentially political problems.

The Fight Against Corruption Maduro’s main political strategy has been to try to get the NA to grant him extraordinary powers to legislate by decree—the same goal desired by Chávez and again by Fujimori in Peru in the 1990s. He argues such actions are justified, because he is fighting a war against corruption, which results from capitalist practices from the past that have not been eradicated. In October 2013, he presented a proposal to the NA that would have granted him extraordinary powers for one year in accordance with the CRVB. He demanded the power to pass or reform laws to fight corruption, “establishing strategic mechanisms to fight against those foreign powers that hope to destroy the homeland economically, politically, and in the media,” and also to create regulations that sanction the flight of capital. With the stated aim of defending the economy, the executive asked for the power to pass or reform laws and measures that would plan, streamline, and regulate the economy. He believed that this would: • • • •

transform the economic system, safeguard prices and currency stability, promote harmonious development of the national economy, and strengthen the fight against hoarding and speculation.

All this appears to be sound and reasonable, but López Maya rightly finds Maduro’s determination to fight competition and require special powers to do it “paradoxical and bewildering.” Indeed, the ruling party had shelved the anticorruption law of 2012 after a preliminary discussion and approval by the Chavista majority in the NA. The bill was sent

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for review to the general prosecutor, where it was paralyzed. It was said that since the law recognized nepotism as a crime of corruption, “Chavismo” blocked its approval. Also, the government did not recognize the recommendations of the Inter-American Convention Against Corruption of the Organisation of American States. It is well known that corruption exists and is widespread, and that organized crime has penetrated organisms of the central government, such as CADIVI, the institution that regulates access to dollars at the official exchange rate, and also the military sector. A flight arriving in Charles de Gaulle Airport from Maiquitía, an airport controlled by the National Guard, brought in 31 suitcases containing 1.3 tons of cocaine. Corruption also occurs widely in city offices and state governments. In October 2013, the Chavista mayor of Valencia was arrested for corruption. A Chavista ex-governor from Aragua left the country following strong accusations of corruption. As there are no balances among state powers, with all of them subordinated to the executive, there is no doubt that Maduro will use these special powers as an instrument to persecute opponents, finish dismantling the institutions of representative democracy, and consolidate the drift toward an authoritarian socialist state. At its best, relationships between state and society in Venezuela were based on republican principles of civility, dialogue, and respect for the other. López Maya argues convincingly that these principles have dwindled: she asserts that “representative democracy is dying and is being replaced by a communal state, a militaristic authoritarianism that is crystallizing in the name of Chávez. A product of this institutional destruction has been and remains social anomie.” The end result of this process is unknown. Political setbacks occur frequently, and it seems irrelevant as to whether the regime is on the left or the right. The crisis could be averted by a reform that includes the government repudiating violence and opening itself to political pluralism. There has to be an engagement with the opposition as a whole to achieve a transition that preserves the positive legacies of inclusion and social justice attained in Chávez’s earlier years and assures a return to the rule of law as stated in the CRBV. The CRVB is the ultimate social pact agreed upon and approved by a popular referendum by Venezuelans. Sadly, the strongest trend seems to be a hardening of Chavismo and a growing militarization of the country and of Maduro’s government. This will only lead to more political crises.

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On December 8, 2013, municipal elections were held (only for mayors and council members), but the government made use of public resources (institutional, human, and financial) as usual, without the National Electoral Council containing or punishing such practices. The candidates of the Chavista party PSUV obtained 5,273,939 votes nationwide (47.6%), whereas those of the main opposition party, the MUD, attained 4,419,877 (39.44%). Alternative candidates obtained 9.87%, with 3.63% of ballots invalid. The ruling party interpreted these results of Maduro’s growing strength compared to April’s results as a recovery that encouraged him to move forward with the Homeland Program. Maduro said he was ready to promote dialogue by recognizing and meeting with opposition governors and mayors. On the other hand, the president of the NA, the powerful Diosdado Cabello, again rejected political dialogue: “We will not succumb to the blackmail of dialogue … I flatly refuse. I will not meet with fascists.” It appears he is too hard line in his attitude to the opposition to ever become president (López Maya 2014). In February 2014, the sour economic and political crisis erupted again, provoked by massive street protests led by the student movement and civil society and political figures from the MUD, such as Voluntad Popular and its director Leopoldo López and some independent party members. The initial motivation was the unsafe environment that was prevailing in the cities. The protests intensified and expanded to create a cycle that continued and recurred in the months and years beyond. By April 4, there had already been 39 deaths, 608 people injured, dozens of complaints of torture and abuse, 2,153 detentions, and more than 168 people jailed, one of whom was López of Voluntad Popular and a candidate for president (López Maya 2014).

A Country Falling Apart The analyses of Ellner and even more of López Maya written in 2014 have proved remarkably accurate and prescient as Venezuela stumbled, faltered, and then lost its way. In the period 2013–2019, protests were not heeded, anger steadily grew on both sides, and the economy nose-dived. In November 2013, when Venezuela appeared to be heading rapidly for economic collapse, the journalist Mark Weisbrot, who takes a keen interest in the Venezuelan case, argued that “[p]redicting a Venezuelan apocalypse won’t make it happen” (Weisbrot 2013). The opposition in

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Venezuela and often abroad argues the country is caught in an inflation– devaluation spiral, with rising prices domestically undermining confidence in the economy and currency, causing capital flight and driving up the black-market price of the dollar. All this adds to inflation, along with money creation by the government. Its price controls, nationalization, and other interventions have made things worse. Venezuela has experienced only two recessions in recent times: one caused by the oil strike (2002–2003) and one brought on by the world recession of 2009–2010. However, since the government took control of the national oil company in 2003, the following decade’s performance was good, with average annual growth of real income per person of 2.7%, poverty reduced by over 50%, and large gains for most people in employment, access to health care, pensions, and education. Weisbrot (2013) does identify the bad economic news that is revealed now almost every day: consumer prices up 49% in the year 2012–2013, a black market where the dollar fetches seven times the official rate, shortages of consumer goods from milk to toilet paper, the economy slowing, and central bank reserves falling. Against all these negative factors, Weisbrot argues that Venezuela still cannot end up with a balance-of-payments crisis, since in 2012 Venezuela had over $90 billion in oil revenue. In that year, oil brought in $93.6 billion and total imports in the economy were $59.3 billion. Therefore, the current account was in surplus. Interest payments on public foreign debt were only $3.7 billion. For the first two years of the economic recovery that began in June 2010, inflation was falling, even as economic growth sped up to 5.7% for 2012. In the first quarter of 2012, it reached a monthly low of only 2.9%. Weisbrot concludes that the Venezuelan economy is not going to run out of dollars. The Bank of America’s analysis of Venezuela in October 2013 recognized this and decided as a result that Venezuelan government bonds were a good buy. Weisbrot (2013) notes that Venezuela has serious economic problems, but they were not of the kind suffered by Greece or Spain. He concludes Venezuela has sufficient reserves and foreign exchange to do whatever it wants, including driving down the black-market value of the dollar and eliminating most shortages. He points out that Venezuela, like most economies in the world, also has long-term structural problems, such as overdependence on oil, inadequate infrastructure, and limited administrative capacity, but these are not the cause of its current predicament. He states that the poverty rate dropped by 20% in 2012, almost certainly

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the largest decline in the Americas, and one of the largest—if not the largest—in the world.

US Sanctions Venezuela’s Vice President In the wake of President Maduro’s crackdown on dissent following antigovernment protests in 2014, the US Congress passed legislation authorizing the US president to ban visas and freeze the assets of anyone accused of carrying out acts of violence or violating the human rights of those opposing Venezuela’s government. In February 2017, the US Treasury announced sanctions against Venezuela’s vice-president, Tareck El Aissami, describing him as a “prominent drug trafficker” who had overseen and even partially owned narcotic shipments from Venezuela to the US. As governor of Aragua state and minister of the interior, he also dealt directly with Mexico’s Zetas cartel and Colombian narco-boss Daniel “El Loco” Barrera. In January, he was promoted to vice-president. El Aissami is only the latest (if the most highly placed) in a list of Venezuelan officials or people close to power who have been tied to trafficking. In 2016, US federal prosecutors insisted on indictment against the retired generals Néstor Reverol and Edilberto José Molina for receiving bribes in exchange for notifying traffickers of police operations. Shortly afterward, Maduro appointed Reverol minister of the interior. In November 2016, two nephews of Maduro’s wife were convicted of conspiring to import nearly a ton of cocaine into the US after they had been arrested in Haiti and extradited to the US. According to the US State Department, a quarter of the cocaine produced in Columbia travels through Venezuela: an estimated 110 tons a year. Luis Cedeño, director of a group that runs an organized-crime observatory, says that Venezuela has “gone beyond a narco-state.” It is a “mafia state” in which other criminal economies, such as fuel smuggling and contraband in basic goods have become entrenched, contributing greatly to the acute shortage of food and medicines (Hernández & Brodzinsky 2017).

Venezuela Faces Opposition Activists and Student Prisoners In January 2017, Venezuela’s government freed a former presidential candidate and several student activists jailed during protests in 2014. Manuel Rosales, a former governor of Zulia state who ran for president

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in 2006, was imprisoned on charges of illicit enrichment after returning to Venezuela after six years of exile in Peru. The students were considered political prisoners. The most prominent activist released was one who had led hard-liner students who camped for weeks outside the UN offices in Caracas. In mid-April 2017, the embattled President Maduro announced plans to expand the number of civilians involved in armed militia from 100,000 to 500,000 and arm each member with a gun. The announcement to the thousands of militia members on the seventh anniversary of the force’s founding came when the president said it was time for Venezuelans to decide “if they are with the homeland or against it.” The occasion came as Maduro’s opponents were gearing up for a huge rally the next day to call for elections and make many other demands. Former congresswoman María Corina Machado posted a photo of the militia gathering on Twitter, saying it was a “pathetic, desperate and unconstitutional attempt by the regime to intimidate Venezuelans” (“President exacerbates tensions in Venezuela” 2018). Meanwhile, the opponents of Maduro continued their strict protests against what they said was his authoritarian administration and destruction of the country’s oil-rich economy. They wanted early elections to remove Maduro and put an end to economic crises, soaring prices, and increasing hunger in the nation of 30 million people. They also marched in Caracas to remember at least 37 people who had been killed since the unrest started in April. More than 1,800 people had been arrested since early April, according to the rights group Penal Forum. Maduro said protesters were seeking a coup with US support (“Maduro opponents continue protests” 2017).

A Plea for Peace and Reason The perfect and poignant riposte to Maduro’s charge that its opponents are “nothing more than terrorists” came when a single brave violinist appeared in the midst of a chaotic protest against the government to play a perfect rendition of Venezuela’s national anthem while tear-gas canisters exploded around him. Violins became a symbol of the opposition movement after the death in May 2017 of Armando Cañizales, an 18year-old viola player. He was shot in the neck at a protest, apparently by a plastic pellet fired by a national guardsman. Cañizales was a member of

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Photo 11.2 A very poor dilapidated peasant house

El Sistema, a classical music-education project whose musicians mostly come from poor backgrounds. It is one of the few cultural initiatives in Venezuela that receives support from both sides of the political spectrum. The death of Cañizales led to rare criticism by El Sistema of the Venezuelan government. It stated on its Web site that “Armando was assassinated in the midst of disproportionate violence against unarmed citizens” (López 2017). Venezuela’s distinguished conductor Gustavo Dudamel, a former student at El Sistema who now directs both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Venezuelan principal orchestra the Simón Bolívar Symphony, also issued a strong rebuke to Maduro: “It is time to listen to the people: enough is enough.” This comment surprised many, as Dudamel performs for the government regularly and often appears in public with Maduro (López 2017) (Photo 11.2).

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References Hernández A, Brodzinsky S. Venezuelan VP claims show there’s no separation of drugs and state. Guardian Weekly. 2017. López V. Gustavo Dudamel attacks Venezuelan president Maduro: ‘Enough is enough’. May 4, 2017. Guardian Weekly. López Maya M. Venezuela: the political crisis of post-Chavismo. Social Justice. 2014;40(4):68–87. Maduro opponents continue protests. May 12, 2017. Guardian Weekly. President exacerbates tensions in Venezuela. August 19, 2018. Dominion Post. The president in his labyrinth: on the flight to Venezuela. August 2000. Le Monde Diplomatique. Weisbrot W Sorry. Venezuela haters: this economy is not the Greece of Latin America. November 7, 2013. Guardian.

CHAPTER 12

Maduro Makes a Mockery of Democracy in Venezuela

Opponents of Maduro Continue Protests: Growing Anger Among the Poor and Urban Ex-Peasants Unrest in May 2017 was a carryover from April, when a Supreme Court ruling stripped the opposition-led assembly of its powers. The ruling was quickly overturned, but it galvanized the opposition to carry out protests almost every day. At least 30 people died. In early May, Maduro announced a constitutional assembly would be formed to redraft the CRBV, which he said was necessary to restore peace and prevent a coup. Opposition demonstrators responded, clashing with riot police. They described the president’s move as a play to delay regional and presidential elections that the government knew it was unlikely to win. On April 20, a wave of protests broke out in El Valle, a working-class neighborhood in southeast Caracas. There were ripped outdoor frames, shards of broken glass, the remains of a fridge on the side of a trashcovered street. The protests morphed into a nighttime looting spree that left 12 people dead. Nine died in a bakery, electrocuted when a bare cable hit a puddle of water, and others were shot. The events of the night suggested significantly that Venezuela’s crisis might be moving to a new phase: poor people were now beginning to take to the streets to express their frustration with Maduro’s government. A week before, in the city of San Félix, the president (who grew up in El Valle) was pelted with © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Watters, Rural Latin America in Transition, Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65033-9_12

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stones and eggs. The El Valle poor and other poor parts of Caracas fear the heavy-handed response from the national guard, and also the heavily armed street gangs that dominate their neighborhoods. The latter now appear to be willing to confront state-security forces (LÒpez 2017a). Venezuela has the world’s highest inflation, forecast by the IMF to exceed 700% by the end of 2017. In 2016, the economy contracted by over 18.6%. Everyday life has been reduced to a succession of challenges: food shortages, cash shortages, spiraling crime, and a health sector in crisis. In El Valle, this involves hours of queuing, often under a very hot sun, to buy basic foods. Scared, people live under a self-imposed curfew. Economic contraction means more people hold informal jobs with low incomes, vulnerable to price rises. Businesses are faced with a lack of raw materials, increased threat of robbery, a daily struggle to make a profit, and now the threat of looting. Many shops do not open because they have no products, and others are wary of lifting their shuttered doors for fear their shops will be destroyed (Photo 12.1). This is, however, not the first time violent riots have shaken Venezuela. In 1989, there were three days of unrest, known as the Caracazo. El Valle was hardest hit: hundreds of shops were destroyed and thousands killed in what then was considered the most prosperous economy and

Photo 12.1 A small, dilapidated wayside store, advertising the local beer

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stable democracy in Latin America. That wave of unrest was fueled by discontent at a corrupt political elite. A repetition of history is feared. Despite the gains of the last decade, the poor are still disadvantaged. In violent protests, the National Guard protected the big supermarkets but left small shops unguarded and vulnerable to looting (LÒpez 2017a). The El Valle case revealed a rather new pattern of violent actions: first, people protested in the street, then a handful took advantage of the situation to break into shops and steal food. Soon, burning tires blocked the street and then armed cars rolled into the barrio. The National Guard’s now-familiar battalion fired tear gas and buckshot at antigovernment protestors to disperse them, but now they were met by street gangs armed with military-grade weapons, including hand grenades bought from corrupt soldiers. The fighting between the National Guard and the gangs lasted at least four hours (López 2017d).

Venezuela “Air Attack” On June 27, 2017, a helicopter flew over Venezuela’s Supreme Court and interior ministry, the pilot firing several shots and dropping several grenades. In minutes, social media exploded with the news and photos and video of the pilot, who identified himself as Oscar Pérez, a specialoperations officer with the national police. One clip showed Pérez holding a flag that read “Freedom Article 350”—a reference to the section of the CRBV that allows for civil disobedience against an illegitimate regime. Pérez issued a statement: “We have two choices: be judged tomorrow by our conscience and the people or begin today to free ourselves from this corrupt government.” President Maduro described the episode as a terrorist attack to force him from power. “It could have caused a tragedy with several dozen dead and injured,” he said (Zuñiga and Miroff 2017). The next day, many people speculated that the incident may have been staged by a government eager to divert attention from three months of protests by those angered by the lack of food and medicines. Julio Borges, president of the opposition-led NA, said he and other opponents of Maduro were still analyzing the events: “It seems like a movie. Some people say it is a setup, some say it is real, but I summarize it like this: a government is decaying and rolling while a nation is fighting for dignity” (Zuñiga and Miroff 2017). Minister of Information Ernesto Vallegos said that Pérez launched four Israeli-made grenades of “Colombian origin” and three exploded. No

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one was hurt, and there was no sign of physical damage outside either building. He said security forces had been deployed to arrest Pérez, whose helicopter was found abandoned in a remote region on the Caribbean coast the next day. Skeptics questioned how an aircraft was allowed to circle above such sensitive government buildings in a city where even drones are illegal. Meanwhile, while the helicopter attack unfolded, three significant events occurred. The attorney-general, Luisa Ortega Díaz, who had contested the Supreme Court decision in March dissolving the opposition-controlled NA, was stripped of her power by the Supreme Court, which transferred them to the ombudsman, Tarek William Saab, who is loyal to Maduro. Ortega Díaz has been barred from leaving the country and has her bank accounts frozen. Meanwhile, a group of opposition legislators said they were being held against their will inside the NA by armed militiamen loyal to Maduro. On the nights of April 3 and 4, looting broke out in the city of Maracay, one of the country’s main military bases. Scores of shops were sacked, more than 70 people killed, and thousands injured in the violence (Zuñiga and Miroff 2017).

Maduro Government Jails Two Opposition Leaders After the election of a new political body with sweeping powers to strengthen the hand of the leftist government, Venezuela jailed two leading critics of President Maduro. The progovernment Supreme Court announced the jailing of opposition leader Leopoldo López, aged 46, and veteran politician Antonio Ledezma, aged 62, stating that they were planning to leave the country and had violated the terms of their house arrest. Government opponents called the abrupt removal of the men from their homes in night raids a sign of Maduro’s determination to silence rivals and stamp out political unrest. About 120 people were killed in more than four months of antigovernment street protests, including at least ten during the vote in July 2017 to rewrite the CRBV and dissolve the opposition-led congress, eliminating any constitutional check on Maduro’s power. Both men were taken to Ramo Verde military prison southwest of Caracas. The heavily guarded hilltop complex is a notorious detention center for political and military prisoners (Brodzinsky 2017b). US President Donald Trump condemned the arrests, calling the two men political prisoners being held illegally by the regime. He added that the US holds Maduro—who publicly announced he would move against

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his political opponents—“personally responsible for the health and safety of Mr López, Mr Ledezma, and any others seized.” The new legislators from the vote, including Maduro’s wife and son, were set to take over the NA building from the lawmakers of the opposition-dominated body. The latter were defiant, condemning the election as a “farce” and claiming that the “government invented millions of votes.” They also denounced the raids: “Imprisonments and persecution of the leadership will not stop the rebellion.” The socialist government’s growing isolation was reinforced by the ambassadors from the UK, France, Spain, and Mexico going to the NA to support the opposition lawmakers. The French ambassador Roman Natal said, “The Venezuelan people want peace, democracy and its institutions, and we are here to help” (Brodzinsky 2017b).

Opposition Leader Released from Jail by Maduro Leopoldo López, the fiercest political rival of the Venezuelan government, was freed from house arrest, leaving jail on July 8, 2017 in a surprise move after nearly three and a half years in prison. The Maduro government called the decision a humanitarian gesture because of his allegedly poor health, but his supporters celebrated his release as a capitulation by the embattled government. López, 46, was arrested in early 2014 and sentenced to a 13-year jail term. He became a symbol of resistance for opponents of the government, his portrait painted on T-shirts and flags of the protestors. López was escorted out of prison in darkness about 3 am, and news of his release was applauded by governments throughout the hemisphere. There were calls for Venezuelan authorities to release others held on politically related charges. The freeing of López presented a significant risk for Maduro. The former Caracas mayor ranked in polls as the country’s most popular politician, and in a statement read by opposition leaders he said he was not afraid to return to jail. The conditions of his confinement had changed, but his conviction—on charges of inciting violence during 2014 protests—had not been lifted. He was placed under house arrest with an electronic bracelet attached. A statement by defense minister Vladimir Padrino López encouraged international dialogue led by the former Spanish socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. However, after years of failed attempts at mediation, it appears that the release is merely a cynical attempt by the government to buy more time (Zuñiga 2017).

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Venezuelans Fleeing Their Country as It Collapses As Venezuela falls further into a humanitarian disaster of economic collapse and political repression, huge numbers of its citizens are fleeing to other countries to find havens in which they want to build new lives. In 2016, there were 27,000 Venezuelan asylum seekers worldwide. In July 2017, over 52,000 had applied for asylum. For most, the easiest destination to reach is Colombia, which has a 2,200-kilometer border and a humane president in Santos. The UNHCR estimated about 300,000 Venezuelans lived there in July 2017, but the Association of Venezuelans in Colombia estimated there were about 1.2 million Venezuelans in the country of 45 million (Brodzinsky et al. 2017). In Brazil, the border state with Venezuela is Roraima. It has become a destination for at least 290 migrants from the Warao indigenous group. At least 500 Warao have moved on to the Amazon city of Manaus. In small Caribbean countries, the Venezuelans’ arrival has had a greater impact. Trinidad and Tobago, a country of 1.3 million, have received 40,000 Venezuelans, and similar situations in Panama and the Dominican Republic have led to Venezuelans being harassed and told to “go home” (Brodzinsky et al. 2017). Peru is welcoming to Venezuelan refugees, introducing a special visa allowing Venezuelans to study, apply for jobs, open a bank account, and access health services for up to a year. Some 6,000 Venezuelans were granted the visa, with another 4,000 applicants waiting for approval. In 2012, Argentina accepted 1,911 Venezuelan migrants. In 2016, the total reached 12,859, and by the first quarter of 2017, 8,333 more had arrived. In south Bogotá, Colombia, 12 new arrivals had to huddle on thin mattresses under thinner blankets. They had no hot water and a few furnishings salvaged from a nearby dump. They worked 12-hour shifts at car washes or kitchens. Most did not have work permits and so were in constant threat of deportation. But life was considered better than back home in Zulia: they earned enough to eat and could even send a little money back home. By mid-May 2018, it was stated that at least 1 million people had left the country in the last four years (Brodzinsky et al. 2017).

Is Venezuela About to Plunge into Civil War? Civil protests have been quite frequent since 2012, occurring from time to time. But they have reached a much greater frequency and intensity since

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April 2017. I have explained the reasons for protest: food and medicines are desperately short, the economy continues to collapse, and the government is acting in a more and more dictatorial way. In the three and a half months from April to late June 2018, the protests became more violent: 101 people died. In spite of the rampant violence, Francisco Toro argues that in fact the violence has been restrained (Toro 2017). The security forces and protesters rarely use deadly force, using nonlethal force. There seems to be a rhythm and a set of unwritten rules about how much violence is admissible. Early in the afternoon, protesters come out around the country to rally or march against the regime and the security forces quickly muster in return. Tear gas is used, often liberally. The protesters scatter, regroup, and bombard the police or troops with rocks or Molotov cocktails. The cops sometimes fire rubber pellets back at the crowds, or even large glass marbles loaded into shotgun cartridges. After retreating, the protestors regroup to march or block the roads once more. Some people have been killed by rubber bullets or tear-gas canisters fired at close range. About 102 people have died in these protests—about one a day. The security forces know however that live ammunition cannot be used at protests—some of the deaths occur when an officer feels threatened in the chaos, panics, and pulls a firearm. While the old-fashioned Molotov cocktail is a crowd favorite, it is not especially lethal. Toro points out that “Venezuela is still a long way from Libya or Syria, where regimes turn machine guns on protesters right from the start” (Toro 2017). In a country where guns are readily available, this restraint is noteworthy. The balance is however extremely precarious: with every day of protest, there is a new chance that something or someone will upset it, tipping the conflict into a new or far more deadly form. A video from the eastern city of Lecheria shows that some opposition groups have worked out how to rig roman-candle arrays to work like multiple rocket launchers. For the first time, in June 2018 protesters used an improvised explosive device, wounding seven soldiers (López 2017a). It is disappointing that the international community has regarded the situation in Venezuela with dangerous passivity, as Toro points out, discounting the potential for all-out civil conflict (Toro 2017). Although it is now late in the day, a negotiated solution to the crisis is still possible. Its outline is almost discernible: it must be based on basic human rights and the unadulterated principles of the CRBV. It is likely that a government of national unity is based in the interim on democratic rights and

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involving both members of the Chavista party and opposition parties in equal numbers. A highly competent and experienced economic tsar needs to be brought in to totally run and manage the economy for a year or two until stability is restored, inflation controlled, corruption greatly diminished, and sound and fair policies instituted. When these conditions are attained, many Venezuelan migrants might return home, and then the election of a new government could be held under the oversight of international referees to ensure the results are not manipulated. The UN should lead the whole process, involving experienced political and economic leaders from three or four Latin American countries and two or three from other major democratic countries. Despite the fierce ongoing protests from hundreds of thousands of civilians and the group of opposition parties, Maduro was emboldened by a violence-marred vote to elect a new constitutional assembly on July 30, 2017. He said its role was “to do away with parliamentary immunity for whom it should be canceled. The assembly will allow the imposition of order.” He added “some will end up in a jail cell.” He also described the vote as the election of a power that is above and beyond every other, adding “It’s the superpower.” Maduro gave a celebratory speech after the National Electoral Council claimed that a higher-than-expected 8.1 million voters or 41.5% of eligible voters turned out to elect 537 members to draft a new constitution (Brodzinsky 2017a). Opposition leaders urged protesters not to vote in the sham election designed to perpetuate Maduro’s presidency. They claimed that no more than 3.6 million, or about 18.5%, of eligible voters had participated. They pointed out many were forced as public employees and risked losing their jobs if they did not vote for the establishment of the new constitutional assembly, which was also expected to grant supreme power to President Maduro, turning the country into a fully-fledged dictatorship (“Maduro takes aim at enemies” 2017). The vote was widely denounced internationally as illegitimate, and the US announced sanctions against Maduro, making him just the fourth head of state subject to such restrictions (the other three are North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe). US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the US was freezing all of Maduro’s assets held under US jurisdiction. The US National Security Advisor HR McMaster stated, “Maduro is not just a bad leader. He is now a dictator.” While the US was considering broader sanctions against Venezuela, including against its oil industry, it was aware

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that would have devastating effects on the ordinary people. The country was already in a state of economic freefall. The vote for the new assembly had been repudiated by foreign governments, and opinion polls in the country showed that nearly three quarters of Venezuelans thought that the new constitution was illegal or unnecessary. Smartmatic, the British company that supplied voting machines to Venezuela, said it had withdrawn its staff. It said the vote in July 2017 for the new constituent assembly, whose main purpose was to circumvent the opposition-controlled legislature, had been “manipulated” (“Maduro takes aim at enemies” 2017). On August 1, opposition leaders Leopoldo López and Antonio Ledezma were taken from their homes, where they had been under house arrest. Maduro criticized the nation’s three private TV broadcasters Televen, Globovision, and Venevision for their coverage of the election and the accompanying violence, as well as Attorney-General Luisa Ortega Díaz, who declared the new assembly to be in violation of the 1999 CRBV. She said, “the object of the constitutional assembly is to do away with whatever obstacles remain to absolute power. We are confronting a crime against humanity” (“Maduro takes aim at enemies” 2017). Protests following the August 2017 election of the new constitutional assembly continued after the Supreme Court ruling in late March that deprived the NA of its lawmaking powers and transferred them to Maduro’s discretion. This ruling was later partially rescinded, but the decision gave momentum to Maduro’s self-seeking ambitions. The new constitutional assembly was expected to be headed by Maduro’s wife, Celia Flores, or his close ally Diosdado Cabello (LÒpez and Brodzinsky 2017). Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, dismissed the election as a sham. Countries across the region, including Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, and Paraguay, said they would not recognize the vote. Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay announced Venezuela’s indefinite suspension from the Mercosur trading bloc. On the other hand, Maduro said he had received congratulations from governments including Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. Russia also expressed support for Maduro. Four people were killed on the day of this special election. In the southeastern town of Ciudad Bolívar, Ricardo Campos, leader of the youth wing of the opposition Acción Democrática (the most successful party of Romulo Betancourt in the 1960s) was murdered when gunmen stormed

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into his home in Cumana. Two others were killed during protests in Mérida in the Andes (LÒpez and Brodzinsky 2017). Maduro insisted the new constitutional assembly was the path to “peace and reconciliation in the country.” His opponents saw it as a rubber-stamp parliament and the end of 60 years of democracy in Venezuela. The opposition leader Henrique Capriles said, “the government wants to sell the constituent assembly as a solution to the problems. But it’s only aggravating them” (LÒpez and Brodzinsky 2017). Sadly, however, the determination of Maduro, still backed by the armed forces, seemed to be paying off. The sham parliament was immediately supplied with an armed guard. After months of protests, the enthusiasm of people for street demonstrations was showing signs of waning. As an assistant in a Caracas bakery said, “We all want Maduro to go. He is the worst president. But it feels so hopeless too” (LÒpez and Brodzinsky 2017).

Intervention of US Vice President Mike Pence On August 13, 2017, President Trump sent Vice President Mike Pence on a weeklong visit to South and Central America with “a stern message for Venezuela’s autocratic government to end the tragedy of tyranny and to restore democracy.” Pence said the US would increase economic and diplomatic pressure on Venezuela and work with Colombia and other regional democracies to isolate the government of President Maduro. Trump had warned a week earlier of “a possible military option” in Venezuela, an inappropriate comment that stoked anti-American sentiment, reviving dark recollections of US interventions on the continent. Pence’s comments came at a joint news conference in Colombia with President Juan Manuel Santos. Colombia is one of the US’s closest allies in the hemisphere, yet as he stood next to Pence, Santos denounced Trump’s threat of military action, saying such a possibility “shouldn’t even be considered.” Pence’s six-day visit to Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and Panama was expected to be dominated by the turmoil in Venezuela. Trump’s bellicose threat generated banner headlines across Latin America, since it referred back to a generation of American imperialism (Rucker 2017). Robert Haas, president of the Council of Foreign Relations, said: “It is one thing for the US president or vice-president to discuss sanctioning the regime and our support for the return of democracy. It is something else

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to discuss US intervention, which only strengthens Maduro’s hand and makes it harder for the regional countries to work with us.” Pence’s arrival in Latin America added his voice to the coalition of nations trying to isolate Venezuela and pressure Maduro to change course. In a watershed development, Latin American countries and Canada signed a strongly worded resolution signed the previous week that called the Venezuelan government illegitimate and demanded a return to democracy (Rucker 2017). Meanwhile, the “elected” progovernment super body stripped the opposition-held parliament of its legislative powers and the fugitive attorney-general accused Maduro of links to a corruption scandal. The existing assembly already has virtually unlimited reach, but it underlines government plans to use the new super body, officially convened to update the CRBV, to further its own agenda. On August 6, a day after the opening of the new, super powerful constituent assembly, a small group of about 20 men staged a predawn assault on an army base in Venezuela, making off with “a large amount of weapons.” This was confirmed by Sergeant Giomar Flores, who had defected from the Venezuelan navy in June and is now in Colombia. The group declared themselves a rebellion against the government of President Maduro. Flores denied any of the attackers were killed or captured. By October 2017, there were however no visible changes occurring in Venezuela’s political and constitutional crisis as a result of Pence’s visit or the pressure applied by the US and its regional allies. On October 18, 2017, the gubernatorial elections in Venezuela were held, since there were devastating food shortages, triple-digit inflation, and a collapsing economy. Polls suggested the opposition would easily win a majority, yet Maduro’s candidates took 17 governorships versus five for the opposition, according to the progovernment electoral board. The opposition called the result a foul, raising the threat of more sanctions being applied to Maduro’s “authoritarian dictatorship” (Rucker 2017).

The Economy: Cash Is Vanishing in Venezuela Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar, named after the great leader Simón Bolívar who led the fight across South America for independence from Spain, had become almost worthless and Venezuela was running out of it. The shortage was so acute in December 2017 that ATMs provided a daily

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limit of Bs10,000, enough to buy only a few cups of coffee. Black-market money changers charged commissions of up to 20% for paper money for small businesses who paid their workers in cash. Banks began to run out of banknotes. Bank tellers will often pay pensioners only half their pension, telling them to come back later to get the other half. Critics contend that Venezuela is turning into a cashless society as a result of economic blunders made by Maduro’s socialist government. Out-of-control spending by the state, government currency controls, and other unwise policies led to hyperinflation and the collapse of the bolivar, which in December 2017 was trading at about 100,000 to the US dollar on the black market. By then, there was not enough cash in circulation to keep up with skyrocketing prices. Senior economist at the Caracas think tank Ecoanalitica Jean Paul Leidenz said there were about 13 billion bolivar banknotes in circulation in Venezuela, but about half of these were Bs100 notes, each worth only a small fraction of 1 cent (Otis 2017). The central bank introduced higher-denomination bills, including the Bs100,000 note, but as these banknotes were printed in Europe and the government was dealing with falling production of oil, its main export, and massive foreign debt, it lacked the money to import enough of them to meet demand. Prices were doubling around every two months, so it was impossible to keep up with inflation, even if bills were imported. Leidenz and other economists called for market reforms, including the lifting of government currency controls to help combat inflation and boost national production. This was Venezuela’s worst economic crisis in more modern history, but the Maduro government did not make any attempt to change tack. Maduro blamed the cash shortage partly on “a US-led financial blockade” and on private bankers, who he claimed were working in cahoots with President Juan Manuel Santos of neighboring Colombia, who had criticized Maduro for his repression of democratic freedoms. Maduro claimed that bankers were smuggling cash across the Venezuela–Colombia border as part of an elaborate conspiracy to sabotage the economy and bring down his government (Otis 2017). The Caracas journalist John Otis points out that Maduro did not explain why smugglers would covet nearly worthless banknotes or why printing them out of the country would threaten the Venezuelan economy. Maduro tried to use the cash crisis as an opportunity for Venezuelans to drop cash altogether. He said that within a year, up to 95%

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Photo 12.2 On the outskirts of Caracas squatters build their “slums of hope”

of all payments in Venezuela should be done electronically. These days, Venezuelans pay for the smallest purchases—chewing gum or a newspaper—with credit or debit cards. The rapidly rising number of electronic transactions has overloaded Internet connections for card readers. Empty shelves at supermarkets lead many Venezuelans to seek out black-market vendors who sell milk, rice, and other basic staples but accept only paper money. Moreover, only about 40% of Venezuelans have bank accounts. They scramble for cash every day (Otis 2017) (Photo 12.2).

The Health Crisis: “Blood on the Black Market” The economic collapse of a country of course has many dire consequences. There are 344 blood banks in Venezuela, and 70% of them are in crisis, mainly because of a lack of reagents used to screen whether the blood is safe from such diseases as hepatitis or HIV. In addition, the number of people with illnesses requiring blood transfusions has risen. An illicit market for human blood transfusions has sprung up through a combination of desperate patients and impoverished doctors. Moreover, although malaria was eradicated from the country in the 1960s, it has now returned with a vengeance. A lack of antimalarial

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medication and a rise in illegal gold miners following the collapse of the currency had created an epidemic. Cases rose 75% in 2017. President Maduro refused to allow humanitarian aid to enter the struggling country, denying there was a crisis and saying that permitting international relief would pave the way for foreign intervention. Health challenges were mounting. Cases of infant and maternal mortality had risen sharply, and long-eradicated illnesses like diphtheria had reemerged (“Sick Venezuelans limp, roll to border for desperately needed health care” 2018). Many people fled Venezuela as the economic crisis worsened in March 2018. Independent groups estimated that as many as 4 million Venezuelans have abandoned their homeland in recent years, with several hundred thousand leaving in 2017 alone. This burgeoning refugee crisis is causing growing alarm across Latin America. Health officials state that Venezuelans made nearly 25,000 visits to Colombia emergency centers in 2017, up from 1,500 in 2015. They projected that Venezuelan admissions to Colombian hospitals would double in 2018. By law, Colombia’s hospitals are required to treat any person, local or foreign, but many Venezuelans turn up with chronic conditions like cancer and diabetes, and require expensive, continuing care. Border cities like Cúcuta have to cope with public-safety issues, like a rise in prostitution and groups of men, women, and children sleeping on the streets. There is a widening perception that crime is worsening (“Sick Venezuelans limp, roll to border for desperately needed health care” 2018). President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia showed great humanitarianism in making Colombian institutions available to the desperate refugees, but he was under great pressure to declare a social emergency, freeing up additional resources. The top US Agency for International Development official for Latin America visited Cúcuta early in 2018 to evaluate how the Trump administration could help Colombia respond to the growing crisis. Colombia’s health ministry planned to deploy half a dozen mobile units near the border to treat minor conditions. A Colombian Red Cross medical center that treats several hundred people each week is at an international bridge on the border, where about 35,000 Venezuelans enter the country each day—most for short stays to find food or work (“Sick Venezuelans limp, roll to border for desperately needed health care” 2018). An attack by at least two drones on a huge military parade in Caracas was carried out on August 4, 2018. Two explosions occurred, but not

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near Maduro. The Venezuelan government claimed it was an attempt to assassinate Maduro, while others thought it was staged by Maduro to justify repression of the opposition (“Dos civiles y dos militares son imputados con los mismos delitos que Requesens” 2018). On a visit to Turkey, Maduro sparked outrage by feasting on a steak prepared by a chef while millions of his countrymen were going hungry. Subsequently, reports emerged that he was exporting tons of gold to the same country in a bid to rescue Venezuela’s economy (Maduro’s Turkish feast sparks outrage as Venezuelans go hungry 2018). By early December 2018, Maduro had achieved a significant breakthrough: Russia agreed to invest more than $85 billion boosting Venezuela’s oil production and an additional $1 billion in mining, principally for gold (“Russia hands Maduro $8.6 billion lifeline” 2018). The Russian government said the private sector would also invest in Venezuela’s diamond sector, bring in new satellite technology and provide about 600 tons of wheat in 2019. Russia will continue to supply and maintain Venezuela’s military arsenal. This is not likely to please the American government (“Sick Venezuelans limp, roll to border for desperately needed health care” 2018).

Venezuelan Crisis Unfolding I had predicted that some kind of international intervention would occur in Venezuela, partly to overthrow the Maduro-led socialist government and also to restore democracy and the normal functioning of the state and its various agencies, which would bear the interests of all Venezuelan citizens. Maduro had been in charge for five years, ever since the death of his leader and mentor Chávez in 2013. When Russian President Putin announced that Russia would come to the aid of Venezuela and provide not only substantial funds but also massive investment in the stricken country, events began to happen very rapidly. On January 24, 2019, two weeks after Maduro had taken the oath for a second six-year term in the face of widespread condemnation, both for violating democratic principles and for being the person responsible for the collapse and rapid impoverishment of the nation, the opposition emerged suddenly reinvigorated. They held nationwide demonstrations on the anniversary marking the end of Pérez Jiménez’s brutal military dictatorship of 1958. Furthermore, Maduro’s main rival, Juan Gerardo Guaidó, president of the NA, fired up the masses of antigovernment demonstrators by announcing himself as interim president, the only way, he said, of rescuing Venezuela from

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dictatorship. Guaidó had the full backing of the Trump administration (Phillips 2019a). Maduro retaliated by breaking off relations with the US, his biggest trade partner. The US led a group of Western-hemisphere nations, including Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, that immediately backed Guaidó’s daring challenge. Trump called on Maduro to resign, and promised to “use the full weight of US economic and diplomatic power to press for the restoration of democracy in Venezuela” (Trump 2019). The people of Venezuela have courageously spoken out against Maduro and his regime and demanded freedom and the rule of law (Daniels et al. 2019). The stunning US move does recall some of the dark episodes of heavyhanded US intervention in Latin America during the Cold War, such as assisting the coup that overthrew João Goulart, the left-leaning president of Brazil in 1964, and also the one that led to the death of Chile’s President Salvador Allende, followed by the brutal regime of the dictator General Pinochet. The US move immediately led to a strong rebuke from Maduro, who immediately cut off diplomatic relations with the US, the biggest importer of Venezuela’s oil, giving American diplomats 72 hours to leave the country. Venezuela in its socialist phase despised American capitalist power, but was careful to maintain relations. Its giant oil refineries on the Caribbean coast were able to refine the heavy black crude oil of Venezuela, but it would now cost much more finding another country able to refine its oil. Raising his right hand in unity with tens of thousands of supporters, the 35-year-old Guaidó took a symbolic oath to assume executive powers that he said were his right under the CRBV and to take over as interim president until he calls new elections. He also shouted that “We know this will have consequences,” before he quietly slipped away from the cheering crowd to an unknown location amid speculation he would soon be arrested. In addition to Trump, Vice-President Mike Pence, who had earlier visited the failing country, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued statements declaring US recognition of Guaidó and saying the US would take all diplomatic and economic measures necessary to enable a transition to a new government (Phillips 2019b). Since Chávez’s period of rule and also throughout Maduro’s rule, the security forces have resolutely and consistently backed the government. On the following day, this did indeed happen when the Venezuelan high command backed Nicolás Maduro, upping the stakes in the standoff over the country’s leadership as the US warned against the use of force

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on protesters. General Vladimir Padrino, the defense minister, accused Guaidó of mounting a coup d’état, and said the armed forces would not back a president “imposed by shadowy interests.” Padrino’s message, one of several from the top brass, said the young opposition leader was staging a putsch against democracy and added that soldiers would be unworthy of their uniforms if they did not defend the CRBV. On Tuesday, a shortlived mutiny by a group of soldiers in Caracas cast doubts on military loyalties. Broadcasts were clearly aimed at reasserting Maduro’s grip on power. On January 25, Britain joined a growing group of Western and Latin American countries that have recognized Guaidó as Venezuela’s president. Jeremy Hunt, foreign secretary of Britain, said, “The UK believes Juan Guaidó is the right person to take Venezuela forward. We are supporting the US, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina to make that happen.” The EU stopped short of recognizing Guaidó, but Antonio Tajani, head of the European Parliament, said it was he who had democratic legitimacy, whereas in the previous year’s election, Maduro’s victory was not free or fair. On the other hand, Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, and Syria lent their backing to Maduro. On January 25, Mike Pompeo warned “remnant elements of the Maduro regime” against using violence to repress the “peaceful democratic transition.” He called for a meeting of the UN Security Council on the following day to discuss the crisis (Goodman 2019). The US did not rule out military intervention, saying that all options were on the table if Maduro’s forces employed violence, but John Bolton, national security advisor, said Washington was focusing on economic measures and would try to cut Maduro off from the oil revenue that had propped up his regime. That revenue should go to the legitimate government of Juan Guaidó, Bolton said (“US backs self-declared president” 2019). This major crisis is obviously a rapidly developing situation. It would be tragic if military action occurs that would inevitably lead to deaths (Goodman 2019).

The Lima Group The Lima Group was formed as a result of the rigged elections in Venezuela in July 2017. The group condemned the elections as “unobserved, unjust, and undemocratic.” Together with the US and EU, the group called in advance of the election for it to be canceled. Twelve

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countries initially signed the declaration: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Peru (Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores 2017). The countries conspicuously absent from the Lima Group were of course Bolivia and Ecuador, who were left-leaning members of the “pinktide group” that until more recently were close allies of Cuba, Venezuela, and Brazil under Lula de la Silva’s regime. Following the election that strengthened Maduro’s position, the members of the Lima Group, now 14 in number, recalled their ambassadors from the country. Maduro’s defiant inauguration as president on January 19, 2019 triggered the showdown (Phillips 2019a). During the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis, Peru’s representative in the UN Security Council condemned the illegitimate socialist regime and noted: “We have received 700,000 Venezuelan refugees and migrants due to the crisis that is the responsibility of Maduro” (“Representative of Peru in the Security Council of the UN” 2019). The Lima Group also supported the sanctions Panama placed against high-level Venezuelan officials, who the Panamanian government accused of money laundering, supporting terrorism, and the funding of weapons of mass destruction, and defended Panama after the Bolívarian government retaliated (Phillips 2019a). Of course, around the world since the US-led intervention, there were many strong protests condemning America’s action. That is entirely understandable. After winning its war of independence from Britain in the late eighteenth century, the US from the 1830s began to spread in an insatiable and unstoppable drive to seize, colonize, and develop as much land in the continent as possible. This great task was seen to be its “manifest destiny,” and as it began to become the world’s greatest power it embraced the principles of freedom and human rights, as represented by the Statue of Liberty. Apart from the periods of isolationism at times in the two world wars, its history since the 1830s is one of steady aerial expansion and imperialism. However, a major country needed to step into the Venezuelan situation supported by the Lima Group countries to end the hemorrhaging and pain. The Hispanic senator Marco Rubio, who was on the shortlist for the presidency in 2016, has been a major player in encouraging the Trump administration to take the decisive step in Venezuela (Borger 2019; Phillips 2019b; “Venezuela’s people deserve a future that is free from Maduro-led intervention” 2019).

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Sanctions Tighten on Maduro The hard-line US National Security Advisor John Bolton took sweeping action against Venezuela’s Maduro on August 7, 2019, warning foreign governments and companies they could face retaliation in the US if they persisted in doing business with the rogue socialist administration. His comments came after the White House froze all Venezuelan government assets in the US, putting the country on the shortlist of US adversaries with Cuba, North Korea, and Iran, which have been targeted by these aggressive financial measures. Bolton spoke at a one-day conference in Peru of more than 50 governments aligned against Maduro. The broad ban blocking companies and individuals from doing business with Maduro’s government and top supporters is the first of its kind in the Western hemisphere since an asset freeze against General Manuel Noriega’s government in Panama and a trade embargo on the Sandinista leadership in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Bolton sent a message to third parties that wanted to do business with the Maduro regime: “Proceed with extreme caution.” He said, “There is no need to risk your business interests with the United States for the purposes of profiting from a corrupt and dying regime” (“Bolton warns foreigners that violate Venezuela asset freeze” 2019). The order fell short of an outright trade embargo—it spared Venezuela’s still-sizable private sector—but it represented the most sweeping US action to remove Maduro since January, when the Trump administration recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s rightful leader. Critically, it exposed foreign entities doing business with the Maduro government to so-called secondary sanctions in the US, a fact not lost on the Maduro government as it tried to rally support at home and abroad (Phillips 2019a). Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez said from Caracas that “the US has to understand once and for all that they aren’t the owners of the world. Every country that has investments in the US should be very worried.” Defense minister Vladimir Padrino, who the US had tried to woo into betraying Maduro, said the sanctions would only bring more hardship on the Venezuelan people without weakening the socialist revolution. Padrino also thought that the US’s real aim was to sabotage ongoing negotiations in Barbados with the opposition, aimed at resolving the country’s protracted political and economic crisis. A senior Trump administration official said the timing of the sanctions reflected the US

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assessment that those talks, which began in May and were being sponsored by Norway, were going nowhere and were merely being used by the Maduro government to buy time. A further sign of tensions occurred when Venezuela accused the US of “hostile and illegal incursions” by sending military aircraft and a ship into its air and maritime territory. It urged the United Nations Security Council to investigate “dangerous” US actions that “threaten war” while behaving like an “outlaw state.” The executive order signed by President Trump justified the financial move by citing Maduro’s “continued usurpation of power” and human-rights abuses by security forces loyal to him. Maduro’s foreign supporters strongly denounced the move. Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Russian Upper House’s International Affairs Committee, accused the US of “international banditry.” The Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel expressed solidarity with Maduro and Venezuelans, accusing the US of “brutal cruelty.” At a nearby petrol station, attendants complain that they have not been paid in months by PDVSA, the state-run oil company that oversees the world’s biggest crude reserves. Tips from drivers help them to just survive, but one attendant has shredded trousers, his shoes are full of holes, and he has a seeping, untreated abscess on his left wrist. The UN estimates 3 million people have fled the country since 2015 to escape chronic food and medicine shortages, crumbling health care and transport systems, and an economy in free fall. Places like Macapo, which has shed up to 15% of its 100,000 population, now has a situation of broken families and empty homes. No life has been untouched. Juan Carlos Guevara, a retired teacher, has to make do with a weekly pension of about 900 bolivars (not enough to buy a kilogram of cheese). His wife Glenda set off overland for Peru with a group of 15 relatives. She works as a career-cum-accountant in Lima and sends funds back to help her husband (Phillips 2018). Maduro’s supposedly visionary economic-recovery plan has totally failed to tame the rampant hyperinflation. Guevara says he believes political change is on the horizon and the country’s diaspora will soon return to rebuild their homeland, but he could not say how and when. The country’s opposition is fractured. Local protests continue, but the mass demonstrations of 2018 have faded, as many people choose to leave Venezuela. In the city of Barquisimeto, top Chavista officials denied their citizens were going hungry and called the migration crisis fake news. Visits to one-room hotels in the city gave the lie to these claims. Malnutrition and

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hunger were widespread. Henrique said his family survived thanks to a $20 monthly remittance from his brother in Chile. Hyperinflation, which the IMF fears could hit 10,000,000%, meant that survival was becoming increasingly tough. Many people were dying of hunger and children dying of malnutrition. Henrique blamed his family’s sad plight on an ideological clash from which leaders have refused to step back. Venezuelans are stuck in the middle of a war that is not theirs (López 2017b). The state and city of Barinas in the southwest where Chávez grew up is in a particularly bad state of decay. Families loaded with firewood bike down the main road, since public buses are as hard to find as food. Police barricades are staffed by forlorn-looking officers who shake down passersby for a pittance. Abandoned factories, grain silos, and car showrooms are being reclaimed by the undergrowth. Graffiti demands the removal of the man most to blame for the great calamity: “Fuera Maduro!” (Get out, Maduro!). Fading Socialist Party murals are still there, insisting that everything is in order: “Chávez lives, and the homeland goes on” (Phillips 2018). But these days, few people are fooled by such claims. “Our lives are becoming impossible,” says a 73-year-old farmer queuing outside a military-controlled petrol station. He expected to be there for at least 10 hours. In the countryside, a driver says he has been waiting for two days “sometimes it is four.” Says Meta, the 73-year-old farmer: “90% of citizens are against the government because they are leading us into the most absolute state of misery and poverty.” At a nearby ranch, a farmer said Venezuela’s breadbasket was heading for “total collapse.” Fertilizers, spare parts, and workers were increasingly hard to find. Soon fuel would be unobtainable (in spite of Venezuela’s huge quantity of petroleum) “no matter how many contacts you have” (Phillips 2018).

The Collapse of Venezuela At Simón Bolívar International Airport in Caracas, the taps are dry, the toilets overflowing, and weeping passengers prepare for exile, not sure when they will return. It was obvious to the journalist Tom Phillips that the Bolívarian revolution, like the airport, had ground to a halt. After Hugo Chávez won a landslide election victory on December 6, 1998, he proclaimed “a new dawn of social justice and people power. Venezuela’s resurrection is underway and nothing and nobody can stop it.” Two

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decades on, those dreams are in tatters. Chávez is dead and his revolution barely exists anymore. Chaos has engulfed what was once one of Latin America’s most prosperous societies. Almost 10% of Venezuela’s 31 million population have fled overseas. Nearly 90% of those who remain live in poverty (Phillips 2018). The Guardian traveled across the nation seeking to understand Venezuela’s collapse, visiting areas that Chávez dreamed of transforming. On the way they met people who still had lingering affection for “the comandante”, the charismatic populist and champion of the poor. They also found many Venezuelans from all classes determined somehow to weather the economic cyclone that still ravages their country. Above all, they found hunger, deprivation, seething anger, and profound apprehension, even among Chavistas, at a government so incapable of fulfilling the most basic needs of its citizens while at the same time denying the very existence of a humanitarian crisis that is unprecedented in modern Latin American history. They found a small number of diehard Chavistas, like Gilda González, the local coordinator of Misión Ribas, an educational program Chávez established in 2003. She keeps Fidel Castro’s memoirs by her desk, and points to a view of government-built apartment blocks admiringly. She stated that Nicolás Maduro “was fighting hard to continue such work” (Phillips 2018). Venezuela’s leaders blame the country’s plight on sanctions and “economic war” waged by what the foreign minister Jorge Arreaza more recently called the “extremist, supremacist, racist government of Donald Trump.” He added, “It’s not just an economic war, it’s an all-round war — a political war, a media war, and a trade war.” González agreed, and warned that Bolívarian militias would resist if the US president acted on insinuations that Maduro could be toppled by foreign forces. “We are ready for an asymmetric war,” she said (Phillips 2018). However, there is little doubt that even prior diehard believers are losing their faith. Pedro García, a Chavista social worker and musician in the same community, claimed that Chávez’s heirs have led Venezuela into an abyss of political infighting and thievery. As if to prove the point, Tom Phillips heard the following day that Chávez’s former treasurer was sentenced to 10 years in jail in the US for taking more than $1 billion in bribes. García pointed out that he continued to treasure the ideals underpinning Chávez’s Bolivarian struggle, but that under Maduro, “Venezuela

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had become like a pressure cooker that had been left on too long. This mess will explode any minute” (Phillips 2018). Along with some of his ministers, Chávez at least had the good sense to try to avoid total dependence on the country’s oil, the source of over 95% of Venezuela’s export earnings, and tried to foster new industries and hand greater power to workers. When he visited Tinaquillo, formerly a textile-producing town, he tried to revive the flagging industry and hand greater power to the workers. “We are forging a new path, a new socialism,” he declared, but 13 years later, the textile mill had been reduced to debris and totally destroyed. Those plans have withered in the last decade and a half. According to the IMF, in November 2019 Venezuela’s economy had shrunk 15.7% since 2017, while inflation hit 860%. Experts believe the situation is far worse (Phillips 2018).

Maduro’s Authoritarianism in Charge Despite international sanctions and widespread discontent throughout the country, by November 2017 Maduro’s authoritarianism was ascendant. He had by then apparently consolidated his grip on power, outmaneuvering the opposition, leaving it fractured and weakened. Although the oil-producing country sought to avert further international sanctions and a debt default that would plunge the country into even-deeper economic crisis, Maduro seemed to have largely neutralized one of his biggest threats—the local political opposition. Formed in 2000 as a united front against Chávez, the MUD was a confederation of antigovernment parties. Some of its major leaders had been forced into detention on what critics called spurious charges, banned or exiled overseas, and their absence weakened the opposition. Sadly, behind-the-scenes infighting between different opposition parties spilt out into the open, and this played into Maduro’s hands. The opposition paid a high price for not being able to form a single opposition party from the various groups under a single leader. The differences widened into gulfs between the various opposition parties in the aftermath of the state elections of October 15, 2017. The new divisions revealed that some factions were even willing to play by Maduro’s rules (Dobson 2018). On January 15, 2017, Oscar Pérez, the dissident who had led the raid in December 2017 on the National Guard armory, making off with a

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cache of weapons, was cornered by security forces and arrested. He and six followers were summarily executed. This ruthlessness contrasts sharply with the lenience shown to Hugo Chávez by the democratic government when Chávez led an abortive attempt to overthrow it in 1992. The coup attempt left 67 people dead, but Chávez’s life was spared and he was pardoned after only two years in jail. In the first week of April 2018, the Texan Republican congressman Pete Sessions quietly visited Venezuela to meet President Maduro at the invitation of the socialist government, apparently in a peace-building mission. Over the previous year, as chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, Sessions had routinely worked to ensure that countries adhered to international standards and the rule of law. He was responding to an invitation from the Venezuelan government to visit the country and meet Maduro. A day later, the number-two Democrat Senator Dick Durbin and some US State Department officials arrived in Caracas for their own meetings with Maduro and government officials (“Sick Venezuelans limp, roll to border for desperately needed health care” 2018). One possible genius politician has emerged who might become a formidable and able (as well as honest) political leader: Henri Falcón, a former ally of Chávez who became an opposition governor of the northwestern state of Lara. He broke ranks with the MUD to run against the president. A poll suggested he could win about 28% of registered voters compared with about 17% for Maduro. Falcón’s chances, however, depend on anti-Maduro voters overcoming their sense of helplessness. A poll by Datacorp suggested that 38% of the electorate would not vote. Boycotters say Falcón becoming a candidate gives legitimacy to a fraudulent election and undermines international condemnation of it, but Falcón states that “Today the conditions are in place, like never before, for a political change in Venezuela.” He cites the precedent of the referendum called in 1988 by Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s dictator, to extend by eight years his 15-year rule. Pinochet lost (Dobson 2018). Cracks are widening up in the Chavista government. The former ambassador to the UN (and head of PDVSA) and former attorneygeneral are in exile. They accuse Maduro of corruption and crimes against humanity. Most of his main advisors are subject to sanctions by the US and EU for drug trafficking or undermining democracy. The government

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has jailed some 60 officers of the army whose support is vital for the regime’s survival (“As Venezuelans go hungry, their government holds a farcical election” 2018). Former bus driver Maduro has certainly surprised many who thought him a bumbling heir to the able, charismatic Hugo Chávez. Despite a record of governance that would destroy most presidents, he is still in power. The president of neighboring Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, predicted that “a change in the regime will happen very soon” that could open the way to the sort of hybrid government that Falcón envisages. The crisis has dragged on for months and indeed years. Some combined Latin American intervention backed by the US and UN must occur (Photo 12.3).

Photo 12.3 Squatter settlers even invade areas under bridges to build homes of their own

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References As Venezuelans go hungry, their government holds a farcical election. May 17, 2018. Economist. Bolton warns foreigners that violate Venezuela asset freeze. August 6, 2019. Los Angeles Times. Borger J. Venezuela at the crossroads: how did we get to this latest state of chaos? February 1, 2019. Guardian Weekly. Brodzinsky S. Venezuela heading for dictatorship after “sham” election, warns US amid clashes. July 31, 2017a. Guardian Weekly. Brodzinsky S. Venezuela: Maduro condemned after opposition duo arrested in midnight raids. August 2, 2017b. Guardian Weekly. Brodzinsky S, Phillips D, Collyns D, Goñi U. “At home, we couldn’t get by”: more Venezuelans flee as crisis deepens. July 17, 2017. Guardian Weekly. Daniels J, Phillips T, Siddiqui S. The power behind the assumed throne. February 15, 2019. Guardian Weekly. Dobson P. Venezuela’s Democratic Action party breaks from MUD as opposition fractures deepen. 2018. Available at: https://venezuelanalysis.com/ news/13926. Accessed February 12, 2020. “Dos civiles y dos militares son imputados con los mismos delitos que Requesens” [Two civilians and two soldiers charged with the same crimes as Requesens]. August 18, 2018. Efecto Cocuyo. Goodman J. Maduro foe claims Venezuela presidency amid protests. January 24, 2019. Associated Press. López V. “Everything is in chaos”: night of violence reveals depths of Venezuela crisis. May 3, 2017a. Guardian Weekly. López V. Hunger fuels growing anger among Venezuela’s poor. May 12, 2017b. Guardian Weekly. López V. Venezuela “air attack” sows confusion. July 17, 2017d. Guardian Weekly. López V, Brodzinsky S. Venezuela election a “sham”. August 4, 2017. Guardian Weekly. “Maduro takes aim at enemies”. August 2, 2017. Dominion Post, Wellington. Maduro’s Turkish feast sparks outrage as Venezuelans go hungry. The Guardian. September 18, 2018. Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores. La Declaración de Lima. Lima: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores; 2017. Otis J. Cash vanishes in Venezuela. December 8, 2017. Guardian Weekly. Phillips T. A slow-motion catastrophe: on the road in Venezuela, 20 years after Chávez’s rise. December 14, 2018. Guardian Weekly. Phillips T. Peer pressure: neighbours turn up the heat on Maduro’s second term. January 18, 2019a. Guardian Weekly. Phillips T. A state of uncertainty. February 1, 2019b. Guardian Weekly.

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Phillips T. Venezuela: Maduro hits back at “gringo plan” to overthrow the revolution. February 4, 2019b. Guardian Weekly. Representative of Peru in the Security Council of the UN: We have received 700,000 Venezuelan refugees and migrants due to the crisis that is the responsibility of Maduro. January 26, 2019. Available at: https://venezuela.liveuamap.com/en/2019/26-january-represent ative-of-peru-in-the-security-council. Accessed April 21, 2020. Rucker P. Focus on Venezuela as Pence begins tour. August 18, 2017. Guardian Weekly. “Russia hands Maduro $8.6 billion lifeline”. December 8, 2018. Dominion Post, Wellington. Sick Venezuelans limp, roll to border for desperately needed health care. March 10, 2018. Associated Press. Toro F. Is Venezuela on the verge of civil war? July 24, 2017. Washington Post. Trump D. Statement from President Donald J Trump recognizing Venezuelan National Assembly President Juan Guaido as the Interim President of Venezuela. January 23, 2019. White House. Available at: https://www.whi tehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-donald-j-trump-rec ognizing-venezuelan-national-assembly-president-juan-guaido-interim-presid ent-venezuela. Accessed September 28, 2020. “US backs self-declared president”. January 25, 2019. Dominion Post, Wellington. Venezuela’s people deserve a future that is free from Maduro-led intervention. February 1, 2019. Guardian Weekly. Zuñiga M. Venezuelans release opposition leader Leopoldo López from jail. July 8, 2017. Washington Post. Zuñiga M, Miroff N. Maduro releases jailed rival. July 14, 2017. Guardian Weekly.

CHAPTER 13

Epilogue

A Reflection on Peasants of Chiapas, Mexico, in 2010 When I worked among the indigenous people of Chiapas in 2010, the most Southern State in Mexico, the population was 4.2 million. About 1.25 million were indigenous peasants, broadly classed as Highland Maya. There were eight principal groups and each had its own language which is the key ethnic identifier. Around San Cristóbal de las Casas (see Fig. 5.5) the most likely peasants to be seen were the Tzotziles and the Tzeltales. Their traditional religious life is nominally Catholic but integrates preHispanic elements. Most people live in the hills outside the villages, which are primarily market and ceremonial centers (Migración cambia la cultura 2010). Tzotzile and Tzeltale clothing is among the most colorful, varied, and elaborately worked in Mexico. Many of the apparently abstract designs on their costumes are in fact stylized snakes, frogs, birds, butterflies, saints and other beings and some motifs have religious-magical-functions. Thus, scorpions can be a symbolic plea for rain, since they are believed to attract lightning. The Lacandones lived deep in the Lacandon jungle, the last great rainforest in Mexico, and avoided contact with the outside world until the

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1950s. In 2010, they numbered about 800 and lived in three main settlements in that region. Low-key tourism had become one of their main means of support. Lacandones were easily recognized in their white tunics and long black hair cut in a fringe. Most Lacandones have now abandoned their traditional animist religion in favor of Presbyterian or evangelical forms of Christianity (Migración cambia la cultura 2010). Unfortunately, the peasant communities in the Chiapas and other states have been traditionally treated as second-class citizens by many mestizos and thus mostly live on the less productive land in the state, with the least amount of government services or infrastructures. The Zapatista revolution was mainly an uprising against this historical injustice. Their rallying cry of “¡Ya basta!” (that’s enough) is a full-throated response to centuries of economic and political discrimination. Indeed, their response is a significant example of peasants “making their own history” (McMichael 2008). Today age-old indigenous ways of life are being challenged by both evangelical Christianity, opposed to many traditional animist-Catholic practices, and by the Zapatista movement which rejects traditional leadership hierarchies and is razing the rights and profile of women. Many highland indigenous people have moved to the Lacandon jungle to clear small areas of new land, others migrate to cities in search of work. In 2010, when I visited Chiapas with my family, I found that 10,000 people had left to live in the European Union; however, about 6,000, including many peasants had returned to their traditional communities to live there each year (Migración cambia la cultura 2010). Of course, it is important for outsiders who wish to visit peasant communities to be polite, respectful, non-judgmental, and interested in peasant culture and lifeways. We found we were invariably welcomed in return. Many visitors are attracted to the colorful clothing and embroidery which they often buy. From the 1960s, the people of Mexico and Venezuela have been involved in a number of significant processes, transitions, or movements: the struggle to achieve economic growth and development, periodic economic booms and busts, surviving abject poverty or hyperinflation, and the effects of rapid population growth and the highest rates of urbanization in the Third World. Mexico is an emerging economic giant, and Venezuela is also a very large and significant country; however, both have some of the highest rates of economic inequality in the world. This book encompasses the

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period of great Cold War rivalry and also marks the emergence of the study of peasantry, its growing mobilization, and the movement of poor, rural people trying to escape from poverty by increasingly challenging the power of the large haciendas, demanding agrarian reform and sometimes even revolution, and their migration as colonists in swelling numbers from the temperate highlands to the hot, wet lowlands or to seek new lives as townsmen or urbanites in the metropolitan cities. The changing roles played by government, international agencies, and different types of political leaders and political philosophies are also discussed in the context of this great economic, social, political, and— sadly—environmental transformation, including the growing influence of climate change and the ongoing struggle to save the rainforests, including the last great rainforest in the world in Amazonia. Consideration of development and policies relating to the Brazilian Amazon throws a clear focus on the urgent necessity not only for the world to emit much less carbon but also for global and national bodies to do all they can to conserve and protect the rainforests, whose great role is to capture carbon and preserve climatic zones and weather systems that are vital for both South America and the entire planet. And thus my work comes full circle, from an account that focuses on the ways in which poor peasants manage their lot to the ways in which we all need to be guardians of the Earth, from the particular to the contextual, from the local to the global. The Alliance for Progress was a great step forward in assisting the peasantry, and so was John F. Kennedy’s initiation of his New Frontiers policy and the founding of the Peace Corps. I met and was greatly impressed by the competence, practical common sense, and friendly outgoing initiatives of many of the young Peace Corps volunteers. They rapidly learnt Spanish and how to relate to ordinary peasants, exploring simple new innovations and sound techniques. In 1964, when I was working in Mexico, I became aware of the National Institute of Agrarian Research. It was a valuable and worthy institution: its officers were well trained and they promoted good agricultural and forestry projects in the various regions. Unfortunately, however, many of the officers were very conscious of their high mestizo status and looked down on the humble peasantry and their communities. Although this reflection of their class and status occurred all the time in Mexico, it inevitably created many problems and barriers. Perhaps today this problem has been ameliorated, at least to some extent.

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The Insecure Situation of the Middle Peasantry Eric Wolf (1973) has pointed out that the middle peasantry are the main holders of peasant traditions and surprisingly can be the cultural conservationists of the peasant social order. It is these middle peasants however that are the most vulnerable particularly to economic change brought by commercialization. Middle peasants are the group most exposed to the consequences of the developing urban poor. The poor peasant in going to the city often cut ties with the land. The middle peasant however stays on the land; sending their children to work in town. They then become a split family with one foot on the land and one in the city, precipitating a situation where the middle peasantry becomes a transmitter of urban unrest and political ideas. “Thus, it is the very attempt of the middle and free peasant to remain traditional which makes him revolutionary” (Wolf 1973, p. 292). What really matters to peasants and people can be essentially reduced to nine fundamental goals: 1. The future wealth and happiness of the family 2. The earning power and hence real standard of living of this generation and the next 3. Provision of adequate, warm housing on a safe site 4. Access to a good system of health care 5. Access to a good system of education 6. The security of a safe childhood 7. The freedom to feel reasonably uncowed by physical or economic dangers and to have a sufficient sense of autonomy 8. Access to equal human rights regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, religion, or class 9. The maintenance of a safe self-sustaining environment and access to clean water (land, sea, and air) (Watters 1971).

Democracy and Development Our case studies of Mexico and Venezuela made it clear that the future of Latin America will be one of great social diversity that needs fostering and protecting in the same way as biodiversity. The common element in altering the present circumstances of these different histories, cultures,

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and capacities must be democracy. While it is often messy and takes a long time to achieve, it is preferable to any other political system. And it is both the goal and the means to attain it. As Susan George notes, “in this case the ends not only justify the means: they are the same. To refuse democratic means is to refuse democratic and diverse outcomes” (George 2010). The wants and needs of Latin America today are not unreasonable or outrageous. They are universal goals, the same as those of most other countries. Take, for instance, the goals of Haya de la Torre in Peru who in 1931 founded APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana), one of the most important political parties in Latin America: Comrades: if we are a democracy, democracy must assert the ambitions and necessities of the majority and the proletarian, peasant and middle classes. Today, the state does not reflect the interests of Peru’s majority or its material or spiritual needs … Even after 110 years of independence, forgotten are the true inheritors and masters of this land, the … indigenous people who know neither how to read nor how to write … and we have never had a policy of educating and preparing the masses to participate democratically in the life of the state. This is why we have created a falsely constituted state that makes it possible for authoritarian governments, cruel tyrannies, and arbitrary liberators who later turn into tyrants to appear periodically. (Bourricaud 1970, pp. 146–147)

If the processes of reconciliation and emancipation, based on good law, few loopholes, and consistent enforcement, are carried out determinedly and with integrity, they should lay the basis for establishing a social contract between the government and the people, including peasants, all the poor and middle classes. Development should proceed at the same time and, given the above changes, stability and peace should ensue. Other factors being equal, confidence should then grow, encouraging higher rates of saving, investment, and innovation. Governments should then be in a position to improve infrastructure such as roads, communication, access to markets, improvement to credit facilities for producers, and technical advice to assist growth in output and productivity. Social progress and gains on the economic front will follow naturally when a freer society has been created, where social justice is finally seen to have been achieved. People will be more willing to discuss political choices, to

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look to the future, to co-operate and to demand improvements to education and health. In other words, democracy, supported by institutional reform, will begin to grow and put down sound roots in the local earth. Democracy in Latin America, as we have seen, is greatly affected by clientelism and populism, as our examples of Hugo Chávez and Porfirio Diaz show. The rise of new political parties usually assists the demise of clientelism, such a persistent factor in South America. James Robinson (2010) suggests, however, that on the basis of Western European evidence, even after democracy is created it usually takes quite some time, probably at least 20 years, for the changes in political power to be manifested in different parties and policies that favor redistribution to the poorer segments of society. That applies to Chile in recent years, with Bachelet’s government embarking on redistribution 24 years after the demise of Pinochet in 1990. Populism is so deep-seated in Latin America, however, that it might still survive in varying ways in new democratic governments (Robinson 2010). At another level, it might serve both Mexico and Venezuela to examine closely Costa Rica’s success story. Although it is a very small country, it has never needed to have armed forces (which are costly), it is very well governed, its social capital is of a high level, and its efficient democracy is a shining example to many other countries of Latin America.

United Nations Censures Maduro and His Government for Crimes Against Humanity As I was adding my final comments to this book seven years after the death of Chávez, I was disappointed that the sad and desperate situation of Venezuela had not been solved or at least greatly improved. But his anointed successor Nicolas Maduro had outlasted his opponents and rivals and backed by army support still ruled as a ruthless autocrat. But on September 25, 2020, I was delighted to read, at last, the following news: Venezuela: UN accuses government of crimes against humanity. Venezuela’s president and top ministers are responsible for probable crimes against humanity including extrajudicial killings and the systematic use of torture, UN investigators have concluded.

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In a scathing, in-depth report published on Wednesday, the panel of experts said that they had found evidence that state actors including President Nicolás Maduro had ordered or contributed to crimes including extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and torture. The report highlighted grisly cases of torture and killings allegedly carried out by security forces who used techniques like electric shocks, genital mutilation and asphyxiation. (“Venezuela: UN accuses government of crimes against humanity” 2020, P4)

While the United Nations takes time in completing all phases leading to a trial, Maduro and others may try to seek sanctuary in a friendly country such as Russia. Hopefully, further steps by the UN, backed by a group of Latin American governments, should soon lead to restoration of democracy with the country holding fair elections under the eyes of UN authorities and independent observers.

References Bourricaud F. Power and Society in Contemporary Peru. London: Faber and Faber; 1970. George S. Whose Crisis, Whose Future? Towards a Greener, Fairer, Richer World. Cambridge: Polity Press; 2010. McMichael P. Peasants make their own history, but not just as they please. Journal of Agrarian Change. April–July, 2008;8(2&3):205–228. Migración cambia la cultura. Tuxtla Gutiérrez. August 10, 2010. Cuarto Poder. Robinson J. The political economy of redistribution policies. In: LÒpez-Calva L and Lustif N (editors). Declining Inequality in Latin America. A Decade of Progress (pp 62 and 64). New York: UNDP; 2010. “Venezuela: UN accuses government of crimes against humanity” September 25, 2020. P4. Guardian Weekly. Watters RF. Shifting Cultivation in Latin America. Rome: FAO; 1971. Wolf E. Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century. London: Faber and Faber; 1973.

Glossary: Mexico and Venezuela

aguas negras black waters or raw sewage anona fruit araguaney national tree of Venezuela asentamiento small settlement avenida avenue baratón iron tipped digging tool cacique Boss campesino peasant cargitas weights or loads caudillo populist leader Chavista supporter of Hugo Chávez (the Communist Dictator of Venezuela) cientificos so-called scientific advisors to Mexico President Porfirio Diaz colono resident, tenant farmer or colonist on hacienda conuqueros migrant shifting cultivation farmers criollo a native person married to a person from South or Central America dependencia dependence dependista a person who is dependent ejidatarios members of an ejido ejido literally, the way out — communally owned land granted under the Mexican land reform © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Watters, Rural Latin America in Transition, Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65033-9

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encomienda forced-labor system, grant by Spanish crown giving rights over Indian population engenho sugar cane crushing by animal power fincas small farms hacendado estate owner hacienda large estate honorado honor jocote fruit La Apertura the opening la estrellita little star ladino see mestizo latifundio large estate llanos tropical grassland or savannah machismo importance of male dominance maquiladoras assembly plants matasano fruit medianeros medium sized holdings mestizo a person of mixed Spanish–Indian ancestry milpa a plot, usually part of a shifting cultivation system nance fruit orgullo personal pride páramo high cold country parcela piece of land pequenãs propiedades small family farms perritos puppy dogs (an abusive term for agricultural officer) personalismo intense individualism pipa water tanker pox alcohol derived from sugarcane and maize ranchos small shanty towns serranos mountains swidden types of shifting cultivation temporal rain-fed terrenos buenos good lands terrenos malos bad lands tierra baldia empty land tierra caliente hot lands tierra fria cold lands usina crushing by mechanical mills yunta plough team

GLOSSARY: MEXICO AND VENEZUELA

zapotes fruit peones (peón) poor workers feudatarios colono or labor service tenants on a hacienda selva rain forest

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Index

A Acción Democrática (AD), 114, 150, 192, 205, 207, 208, 212–216, 220, 226, 245, 247, 285 Agrarianism, vii. See also Agrarian reform, Ejido Agrarian reform, 6, 21, 50, 53, 67, 68, 70, 72, 82, 155, 163, 172, 189, 192, 193, 197, 208, 210–213, 215, 221, 227, 249, 307. See also Betancourt, Rómulo, Ejido Agricultural credit, 161, 169, 182, 184, 192 Agricultural involution, 22 Agriculture, viii, ix, xxi, 4–6, 14, 21, 35, 37, 38, 40–42, 46, 48, 49, 51, 53, 64, 74, 76, 79, 80, 88, 91, 94, 96, 98, 104, 133, 150, 151, 156–158, 160, 168, 169, 174, 180, 183, 185, 189, 208, 215, 236, 246, 248. See also Agrarianism, Agrarian reform,

Agricultural credit, Agricultural involution, Fallowing Alliance for Progress (aid program), 4, 15, 27, 28, 307 Authoritarianism, 123, 266, 267, 269, 299. See also Democratic Unity Roundtable

B Berger, John, 23 Betancourt, Rómulo, President, 6, 114, 150, 201, 205–208, 212–215, 218, 226, 245, 247, 248, 285. See also Agrarian reform Black market, 129, 271, 288, 289 Boli-bourgeoisie, 236 Bolton, John, U.S. National Security Advisor, 293, 295 Buchanan, Keith, viii

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Watters, Rural Latin America in Transition, Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65033-9

317

318

INDEX

C Capitalism, 12, 13, 30, 31, 42, 60, 82, 149, 154, 170, 174, 191, 193, 195, 202, 231, 238, 260 capitalist solution, 201, 204 Caracas drone attack, 290 Cárdenas, Lazaro, President, 25, 69–71, 78, 82, 121, 122 Castro, Fidel, 26, 224, 225, 227–231, 298 Chávez, Hugo, President, 6, 123, 183, 203, 216, 220, 223–245, 247–250, 253, 254, 257–269, 291, 292, 297–301, 310. See also Boli-Bourgeoisie, Constitution, Corruption, Ellner’s thesis, López Maya thesis, Petro-State, Referendum Chiapas, 44–49, 51, 69, 74, 83, 94, 96–98, 100–111, 126–128, 174, 305, 306 China shock, 132 Chomsky, Noam, 242 Científicos , 64, 65, 91 Civil War threat, 129, 282 Collapse, 6, 16, 31, 220, 221, 228, 231, 246, 270, 282, 283, 288–291, 298 Colonial post-tribal society in Fiji, 16 Community, 7, 13, 23, 39, 40, 46–51, 71, 74, 81, 98, 99, 101, 102, 108, 109, 126, 151, 155, 160, 183, 184, 186, 226, 227, 236, 247, 256, 259, 264, 283, 298 closed corporate communities, 102 Constitution, 6, 65, 67, 71, 80, 90, 101, 106, 115, 123, 139–142, 224–226, 232, 233, 239, 284, 285 Corruption, 62, 106, 107, 115, 116, 120–123, 129, 216, 232,

236–238, 242, 248, 259, 260, 266, 268, 269, 284, 287, 300. See also Boli-Bourgeoisie CRBV (Constitución de la República bolivariana de Venezuela), 258–260, 265, 269, 277, 279, 280, 283, 285, 287, 292, 293 Credit, agricultural, 161, 169, 182, 184, 192 Crisis unfolding, Venezuela, 291 Cuban aid, 27 Cuban guerrillas, 232 Cultural ecology, xi, 19, 21 Culture of poverty, xi, 168, 173, 174, 190, 191 Cultures, xi, 11, 14, 16–20, 23, 48, 51, 59, 65, 87, 88, 91, 94, 96, 98, 99, 101–104, 106, 108, 111, 116, 126, 155, 162, 163, 168, 173, 174, 185, 186, 189, 191, 203, 259, 306, 308. See also Cultural ecology, Culture of poverty D de la Madrid, Miguel, President, 79, 84, 105 Democratic Unity Roundtable, 258 Developmentalism, 4, 11, 12, 14, 16, 24, 61 Diáz, Porfirio, President, 61, 62, 67, 91, 101, 115, 139, 310 Direct democracy, 258, 260 Drug-war violence, 129 E Earthquake, Mexico City, 105, 128 ECLA (Economic Commission for Latin America), 29, 150 Economic crisis, 5, 150, 220, 223, 288, 290, 295, 299

INDEX

Economy formal vs. informal firms, 134, 139 mixed economy model, 68, 195 see also ECLA (Economic Commission for Latin America) Ecotypes, 21, 202 ecotype change in and, 202 Education, 12, 13, 18, 24, 31, 61, 68, 69, 72, 74, 75, 77, 88, 104, 110, 113, 115, 120, 123, 130–132, 135, 136, 140, 141, 154, 160, 191, 192, 198, 201, 207, 215, 225–227, 248, 264, 271, 274, 310 Ejido, 4, 50–52, 67, 68, 70–73, 76, 77, 80, 81, 96, 98, 106, 203 Ellner’s thesis, 253 Environment, viii, 2, 15, 16, 21, 43, 49, 53, 59, 70, 80, 90, 96, 108, 132, 134–136, 161, 162, 168, 182, 188, 192, 194, 270, 308 Erosion, 37, 52, 70, 98, 158, 162, 164, 166, 167, 190, 203 Ethnicity, 308 European bourgeoisie (Ricardo, Spencer, Comte), 119 F Fallowing, 37, 70, 162, 167, 180, 202 FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization, ix, xxi, 12, 40, 165 Feudalism, 18, 25, 115 Frank, Gunder, 30–32, 73, 170 G Geertz, Clifford, 21, 22 Gott, Richard, 230, 231, 236 Gourou, Pierre, viii Guaidó, Juan Gerardo, 291–293, 295

319

H Haciendas , 25, 154, 163, 164 system, 25, 61, 163, 172 Health, 3, 7, 13, 43, 45, 53, 61, 69, 77, 104, 141, 142, 151, 168, 181, 201, 212, 225–227, 230, 244, 255, 262, 271, 278, 281, 282, 290, 291, 296, 300, 308, 310 holistic (integrated) approach, 21 Health crisis, 289 Hispanic conquest culture, 61 Hsieh and Klenow, 135

I Imposing agendas, 266 Indigenismo, 25 Inflation, 32, 78, 79, 90, 107, 141, 217, 218, 232, 238, 239, 245, 254, 262, 264, 267, 271, 278, 284, 287, 288, 299 Involution, agricultural, 22

K Kubitschek, Juscelino, 25

L Labor, Venezuela, 151 coffee import and planting in Barinas, 248 Latifundio, 4, 19, 26, 50, 61, 64, 197 Leadership, 5, 7, 26, 29, 31, 50, 53, 64, 114, 186, 207, 208, 235, 244, 245, 254, 281, 292, 295, 306 Leftist allies, 70, 121, 231, 233, 280 Levy, Santiago, 5, 124, 130–142 Lima Group, 293, 294 López, Leopoldo, 266, 270, 280, 281, 285

320

INDEX

López Maya thesis, 257

M Machismo, 18 Maduro, Nicolás, President, 6, 244, 245, 253–258, 262, 265–270, 272–274, 277, 279–281, 284– 288, 290–296, 298–301, 310, 311 sanctions, 272, 284, 287, 294, 295, 299 see also Authoritarianism, Direct Democracy, Economic crisis, Militarization Maize, 11, 37, 40, 42, 45, 47, 48, 50, 51, 71, 78, 81, 87–96, 98, 99, 104, 107, 109, 110, 117, 123, 153, 156, 159, 161–164, 166, 167, 169, 180, 181, 185, 203, 210 new maize doctrine, 87, 89 Malaria, 177, 289 Medical revolution, 178 La Apertura, 218–220 Mexican debt, 89, 120 Mexican development pattern, 61 Mexican revolution, 4, 25, 50, 51, 67, 69, 74, 79, 82, 84, 100, 101, 114, 119, 139, 142 Mexican society, 92, 106 Mexican water crisis, 124 Middle class, 4, 24, 66, 67, 69, 100, 113, 128, 226, 233, 309 Migration to the llanos , 202 Militarization, 105, 129, 267, 269 Minifundio, 1, 6, 22, 71, 163, 165, 167, 168, 188, 190–193, 201, 202, 204, 210 mentality, 165, 168, 188, 190–193, 201, 204 system, 1, 20, 22

Misallocation, 5, 130–132, 134, 136–139, 141 Mission Robinson, Cuba, 225, 230 Modernization, ix, 4, 12, 20, 24, 26, 30, 49, 53, 61, 69, 81, 82, 92, 96, 101, 103, 156, 163, 165, 169, 182, 185, 191, 194–196, 198, 201, 207 Music, Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, 17, 214, 231, 236, 274, 287

N Nationalism, 22, 24, 25, 32, 66, 121, 218 Neoliberal policies, 5, 53, 79, 84 New constitutional assembly, 284–286

O Obrador, Andrés Manuel Lòpez (AMLO), President, 3, 121–124, 142 Oligarchy one party rule, 4, 64, 101, 103–105, 114 Opposition, 79, 105, 113, 114, 123, 206, 225, 226, 229, 231–233, 238, 240, 241, 244, 245, 253–258, 265, 266, 269, 270, 273, 277, 279–281, 283–287, 291, 293, 295, 296, 299, 300 Orgullo, 18

P Paradoxes of development, 3, 11 Passivity, 283 Paz, Octavio, 3, 64–67, 126 PDVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A.), 214, 218–220, 223, 227, 229, 235, 249, 253, 262–264, 296, 300

INDEX

Peasants, ix, xi, xii, 1, 2, 6, 7, 16, 21, 23, 24, 26, 29, 31, 35–39, 41, 43–51, 67–72, 74–76, 78–84, 87–92, 94, 96–99, 101, 102, 104–106, 110, 111, 117, 126, 127, 150–152, 155, 157–163, 166–169, 171, 173, 174, 182, 183, 187–191, 194, 201, 202, 204, 212, 215, 245–247, 253, 305–309 peasant leaders, 126 Peña Nieto, Enrique, President, 78, 115, 116, 120–123. See also PRI (Party of the Institutional Revolution) Pence, Mike, U.S. Vice President, 286, 287, 292 Personalismo, 17, 62 Petro-state, 216–218, 232, 260, 262, 263 Political development, 114, 205, 214 Population explosion, 77 Power, viii, 6, 13, 15, 22, 27, 31, 42, 61, 62, 65, 66, 70, 73, 74, 77, 79, 101, 102, 104, 106, 114, 115, 120, 157, 196, 198, 203, 206–208, 220, 223, 224, 230, 232–234, 239–242, 253, 258, 265, 267–269, 272, 277, 279, 280, 284, 285, 287, 292–294, 297, 299, 301, 307, 310 Presidents, 4, 6, 7, 25, 27, 61, 64, 66, 67, 70, 77–79, 84, 90, 100, 101, 115, 120–123, 128, 129, 140, 142, 203, 218, 219, 224, 225, 227, 229, 231, 233, 234, 236, 238–245, 248, 249, 254–256, 258, 262, 263, 265, 270, 272, 273, 277, 279, 282, 286, 291–294, 298, 300, 301, 310

321

PRI (Party of the Institutional Revolution), 4, 5, 25, 67, 68, 70, 72, 79, 102, 104–107, 114, 115, 120–122, 127, 128 decline, 127 Prison system, 265 Protests, 6, 68, 112, 122, 123, 215, 224, 225, 244, 253, 257, 264, 266, 270, 272, 273, 277, 279–286, 294, 296

R Referendum, 224, 226, 232, 233, 235, 239, 254, 269, 300 Rentier Socialism, 260, 261 Roads in Venezuela, 204 Russia, 217, 233, 234, 285, 291, 293, 311

S Salinas, Carlos, President, 50, 79, 80, 84, 90, 105, 106, 129 Sessions, Pete, 300 Smelser, Neil J., 26 Socialist companies, 262 Social violence, 258 Sowing the oil, 201, 218, 227 Steward, Julian, xi, 19, 20

T Trump, Donald, US President, 120, 121, 123, 124, 129, 280, 286, 290, 292, 294–296, 298 border wall, 129 immigration policy, 120

U United States threat, 248

322

INDEX

USMCA (United States– Mexico–Canada Agreement), 129 US-Mexican border tension, 120 V Violence, 105, 110, 123, 129, 234, 253, 257, 258, 265, 266, 269,

272, 274, 280, 281, 283–285, 293

W Women’s rights, 106